San Francisco, Happy Meals and McDonald’s Special Place in Dante’s Circles of Hell
Two obese children pictured eating at McDonalds
It has been a few weeks since this McDonald’s story sent the public health community into insulin shock for its sheer arrogance and, bordering on Dantesque, end run around the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
You know the news, that McDonald’s had bought off a to-be-implemented San Francisco ban on the inclusion of seductive kid toys in “Happy Meals.” It has taken me this long to respond because I spent a week “enjoying” the meals, and toys, à la Morgan Spurlock in Super Size Me, with some young friends. Afterwards I felt so sick and bloated I couldn’t make it from the couch to my computer.
But now, I’m back, having undertaken a supervised regimen of walking and biking as much as I could and eating healthy meals. No more of the greasy overly salted empty calories that McDonald’s has the temerity to call “food” for me.
Here’s what happened. With San Francisco’s ban on kids’ fast-food meals containing free toys set to go into effect McDonald’s moved its army of PR flacks into high gear to keep the toys in their “meals” by advancing a scheme to have customers pay an extra 10 cents for the trinkets. The saving grace, if you can call it that, has the proceeds from the toy sales going to support the nonprofit Ronald McDonald House of San Francisco. Pretty creative, eh?
Hey, at least McDonald’s acknowledges that without the junk toys to go with their junk food, “Happy Meals” do not appeal to underage “diners.”
Turning to someone with more cred in the public health community than me, Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy (CCPHA) told the New York Times that McDonald’s maneuver was meant to “gut the health ordinance” and to “continue to seduce children to eat junk food.” “In the battle over children’s health, consider this a win for obesity and diabetes.”
So the fleecing of the public continues and McDonald’s maintains its place next to the soda industry as “PT Barnum of the Year.” People talk about selling ice in winter. How about selling “Happy Meals” to a generation of overweight and diabetic children whose junk food filled world will have them living shorter lives than their parents?
I see no health benefits to any of the food in a Happy Meal, but does any one else notice that the size of the drink and the french fry wrapper in the picture are not those of a Happy Meal? Those children are not only not being fed healthy food, but not healthy portions either - unless of course there is water in those cups? If a story talks about Happy Meals, it's photo should related to them too versus a child or children who some day may be very embarrassed to have this article in the media with their picture. I must be missing the facts on how Happy Meals and the picture relate? Is this stretching journalism?
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