Posted on 05/25/2013 5:12:22 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Children are impressionable, and McDonald’s has managed, in the majority of cases, to make children prefer McDonald’s over all other fast food choices. Some people have decided that McDonald’s marketing is to blame for the fact that kids eat French fries and not fruits and veggies. Or, at least, the claim to believe McDonald’s possesses such awesome powers. And they even pretend that they think children are somehow wise leaders in society. Thus, from MSNBC and Morning Joe:
“Nine-year-old Hannah Robertson doesn’t want a Happy Meal. She wants a healthy meal. And she’s not shy about saying it: Hannah took her pitch straight to the boss, telling McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson during the annual shareholder’s meeting that targeting kids with unhealthy food isn’t fair.”
Targeting—as if our children’s mouths are all forced open against their will and Ronald McDonald is out there with a fry gun shooting potatoes into their stuck-open mouths. She goes further, and told the CEO of McDonald’s, “Something I don’t think it’s fair when big companies try to trick kids into eating food that isn’t good for them by using toys and cartoon characters.”
It doesn’t work that way. If you put all of the clown’s power behind the sale of broccoli or spinach, he would be let go within weeks. Contrary to what Hannah Robertson has been led to believe, the children aren’t tricked at all. If you tried to make them eat fruits and vegetables, they wouldn’t be enthusiastic and they’d eventually become downright hostile to McDonald’s “healthy” food. No matter how big the company, or how many toys they used as bribes, or how many cartoon characters they used, children cannot be persuaded to eat butter beans.
If anyone really has the power to “trick” a kid, it is probably the child’s own parent. In fact, Hannah’s mother just happens to be “a kid’s nutritional advocate.” So even though USA Today and Morning Joe both shamelessly use a child to sell an anti-McDonald’s message, they know that nothing of the kind ever happened. Hannah’s mom just exploited her daughter for the sake of a message.
Was the message worth it? I doubt it. Fruits are sugary. The CEO boasted that they now serve low-fat chocolate milk, but such milk makes up for the loss of fat by using more carbohydrates, which many believe are much worse than fat. The idea that fat in food becomes fat in our bodies is arguably a junk-science myth. If so, switching to fat-free, which is heavier in carbs, is an unhealthy move.
But even unhealthier is this ridiculous belief that corporations have the power to make people do things they don’t want to do. McDonald’s may have managed to make children prefer them to Burger King or Wendy’s, but that doesn’t mean they can control children’s real food preferences. The entire pretense is simply propaganda for the idea that children’s food preferences can be controlled by the will of others.
That ridiculous claim in turn provides justification for all the Mayor Bloombergs of the world who claim that the government is supposed to control what people eat for their own good.
For-the-Cheelrun Nanny State PING!
Regular meals with a reasonably varied content and sane serving sizes... that’s probably as helpful as anything else in avoiding gross obesity. McDonald’s was never intended to become a full time feeding station.
since when
Hey, I know - let’s let the loony left do to food what they did to the talk radio industry ;-)
/s
Can’t imagine what Hannah’s parents are like. s/
Apparently all other fast food companies sell good, healthy, wholesome food and never TARGET children. I gotta tell you I’m more than a little fed up with using CHILDREN to target and sell. The last person I am going to take financial, phone service or eating advice from is a child.
okay, maybe grandparents don’t have that option......:-)
Which is why I don’t take mine there. I also made all their baby food because the jarred stuff doesn’t taste like the real stuff. Guess what. They eat avocados and spinach! When did parents start falling for the kids’ food marketing scheme? My in-laws did with my nephew and he is obese at 10, which I think is child abuse personally. My sister-in-law literally didn’t have a clue that chicken nuggets don’t have to come through a window or from a freezer bag. She was astounded, and actually made fun of me, when I cut up chicken breasts from our local farmer, dredged them in flour, dunked them in egg, then dredged them again in seasoned breadcrumbs and fried them in a little olive oil. people just don’t cook anymore and it’s a shame.
Here’s a hint Lefties. Only eat at McDonald’s once a week or once every two weeks.
Problem solved.
Now drink a sip of water. Sit down. Calm down. Relax...
You’re going to be okay.
oh we have the option and they get to go have some french fries and a root beer maybe once a week but it is too bad they ran out of toys and the playground is broke
This cat herding is hard work. It sucks to be a statist who’s trying to change the world.
Human nature is Impossible to change.
Yep. All of the "plugged in" iPad, iPhone, etc 8-year olds in tv ads.
Nothing new, however.
Leftist food police have decreed no fat chocolate milk be served at schools and MacDonalds has it to try to appease them too. The irony is that the beneficial milk calcium is absorbed by our bodies much better if the milk has some fat in it. Agenda trumps science.
lol....never thought of those “reasons” to not go to McD’s.
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