A recent study has connected the dots between fast food marketing and childhood obesity.
I bought more than a few Happy Meals for my kids back in the day. It’s hard to believe how easily I could be convinced to ‘treat’ my little darlings to some over-processed bland food and a 1/2 hour of sliding down plastic slides into a giant pile of plastic balls. I think one of the main things that made them want to go back again and again were the toys. McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys were free, and worth every penny. They were cherished for most of the trip home and I would usually throw a handful away every time I was cleaning out the backseats.
When they got older, I got wiser. They got a kick out of me ordering them cheeseburgers without cheese on the day that the cheeseburger was a value item of the day. Now that we are out of range of the Golden Arches, we sometimes get a merguez sandwich from a guy that fans his charcoal grill with a tree branch.
But I digress…
The simple point that I wanted to make is that a big corporation is using cheap plastic toys to lure children into unhealthy eating practices and it’s BAD.
If there is to be a government solution, I would suggest some kind of stringent requirements for any non-nutritional gimmick used to market food to kids. These requirements could be any combination of things related to environmental responsibility, educational value, quality of materials, even country of origin. If they were so stringent that the chains gave up altogether, that would be great. If they started giving away Arthur Miller plays written on recyclable paper, that’d be fine too.
December 3rd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
The fast food places should go back to providing “not so bad for you food”- it hasn’t always been laden w/transfats, fragrances and extra calories from “biggie” deals etc.
A regular hamburger, regular fries (in a little bag, not a huge box) and a 12 drink were common. Marketing tactics are horrible- weather it be by the fast food giants or food manufacturers. They are just as bad and will market anything that sells despite it’s effect on health and environment (remember Lunchables?)
April 29th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
[...] via plasticless] By Emily Green Apr 29, 2010 9:25 [...]
April 29th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
[...] [photo via plasticless] [...]
April 29th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
[...] [photo via plasticless] [...]
April 29th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
[...] [photo via plasticless] [...]
May 11th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
A few years ago, I could see this happening and not being surprised because back then all we had was burgers, nuggets, fries, and soda. It was all just fatty food. BUT after a few years of studies we found that fast food was the reason why our kids were becoming obese so what did the fast food company do? They said “Fine, your right, we will try to make things better.” So they did, KFC changed the oil they used, and now even have grilled chicken, Mc Donald’s uses real Chicken now and a somewhat better tasting “Beef” and even having substitutes like instead of fries you can have apples, and instead of soda you can have milk. Also, they put information everywhere about the fatty foods, like the number of calories, fat, sodium, ECT on the wrappers of the burgers and the menus at the drive through and such and such. So we cannot say that we do not know that if we feed out kids this fat stuff because the information is RIGHT THERE, and if you think it’s too much for your kid you can always do a substitute.
And the big argument is that kids are still getting fat, and its Fast Food Industry’s fault. BULL S**T. They say it’s their fault because the toys that are in the Happy Meals entice the kids to buy the fatty food and in turn get fat.
OK parents, you’re in the car with your kid, you look in the back seat and see that he has been getting a little chubby lately. We pull up to the nearest Mc’y D’s and go to the menu, you hear the voice from the speaker “Hello welcome to Mc Donald’s, can I take your order?”… Your kid yells “I WANT A HAPPY MEAL! THEY HAVE TRANSFORMERS TOYS!”… And what do you do… “One happy meal please…”
It’s YOUR fault parents, stop blaming others. Do you know what a sensible parent would say? Here let me give you the same scene but let’s do the RIGHT thing:
“Hello welcome to Mc Donald’s, can I take your order?”… Kid yells “I WANT A HAPPY MEAL! THEY HAVE TRANSFORMERS TOYS!”… Turn to your child and tell him or her “Ok, if you want the toy that bad you’ll have to give up the fries and soda, you’ll get apples and juice”. And because the argument said that the kids eat badly because of the toy and the toy is the only thing they care about, then in that since, they would not care if they don’t get a soda. So your kids would say “ALRIGHT BUT I WANT TRASFORMERS!”… “Ok yea, I’ll take one happy meal, with apples and some OJ for substitute”
TAA DAA!
In the words of Chef Ramsays… WAKE UP!