Taking the Santa Clara County, Calif. Happy Meal toy ban to the national level, a radical consumer activist group is threatening to sue McDonald’s if it continues to include toys in kids meals.
“McDonald’s is the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children,” said Center for Science in the Public Interest’s (CSPI) litigation director Stephen Gardner. “McDonald’s use of toys undercuts parental authority and exploits young children’s developmental immaturity—all this to induce children to prefer foods that may harm their health. It’s a creepy and predatory practice that warrants an injunction.”
Gardner couldn’t be more wrong in his tasteless attempt to equate McDonald’s with pedophiles. There are no “strangers” handing out Happy Meals to kids on the playground or at any McDonald’s franchise across the nation. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and legal guardians are making conscious decisions to purchase Happy Meals for their children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.
Some may buy Happy Meals as an occasional reward for good behavior, good grades, scoring the winning goal or just because they know their kids will enjoy a special treat. There are few, if any, parents who consider Happy Meals a staple in their children’s diets and it’s ridiculous to even think that an occasional Happy Meal will cause children to plump-up and add to the list of victims claimed by the so-called obesity “epidemic.”
According to a recent report by Creative Consumer Concepts (C3), statistics show that the CSPI’s claim that Happy Meals are adversely affecting children’s health do not add up:
- [K]ids eat at a restaurant 2.5 times a month.
- In an average 30 day month, there are 150 meal occasions.
- If kids are only going to restaurants 2-3 times a month, they account for only 2 percent of all meal occasions.
“Of the 24 possible Happy Meal combinations that McDonald’s describes on its web site, all exceed 430 calories (430 is one-third of the 1,300- calorie recommended daily intake for children 4 to 8 years old),” states the CSPI press release. Okay, but find us a kid who eats a Happy Meal every day!
Interestingly, the C3 report notes that in the Cupertino Calif. School District, “the average school lunch for elementary school kids has approximately 700 calories.” You can bet there are countless other school lunches being served across the country that are equal to or greater than 700 calories.
The CSPI press release proceeds to spotlight a parent who claims she’s been victimized by the “slick” marketing of McDonald’s and is helpless to prevent her children from being lured in to the greedy arms of a burger-toting clown.
“McDonald’s makes my job as a parent more difficult,” said Sheila Nesbitt, 36, a project manager from Champlin, MN, and a parent of a six-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl. “They market cheap toys that appeal to kids and it works. My kids always want to go to McDonald’s because of the toys. I try my best to educate my kids about healthy eating but it’s hard when I am competing against the allure of a new Shrek toy.”
Boo-hoo! Poor Mrs. Nesbitt can’t control her kids and blames it on McDonald’s versus assuming personal responsibility for her apparent lack of parental control skills. And, the CSPI has already taken our beef with parents like Nesbitt in to consideration as they make sure their case against McDonald’s is bullet-proof.
“I’m sure that industry’s defenders will blame parents for not saying ‘no’ to their children,” states CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson. “Parents do bear much of the responsibility, but multi-billion-dollar corporations make parents’ job nearly impossible by giving away toys and bombarding kids with slick advertising.”
CSPI has served notice to McDonald’s that its “toy-related promotions violate state consumer protection laws in Massachusetts, Texas, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, and California.” McDonald’s has 30 days to cease and desist from including toys in Happy Meals before a lawsuit is filed by the CPSI.
Sounds like Sheila Nesbitt needs to learn that she is in charge of her kids, not the other way around! Just saying! lol My kids want McDonald’s and I don’t want them to have it, guess what, I say the word, “NO” and I don’t drive them there to get it…Wow, that was easy!
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Sheila Nesbitt sounds like a real moron. Guess what dummy, I never eat at McDonalds, although I did all the time when I was a kid and I loved the toys. Now that I’m an adult I hate McDonalds and I hate their food, so I just don’t go. I don’t play with toys anymore either and I love my mother. McDonalds had nothing to do with it dummy. Just don’t go to McDonalds if it’s such a big deal, give it a whirl control freak, don’t impose your shitty morals on others bitch. Do you think your kids will love you more when they find out you’re the dummy that sued McDonalds to stop them from giving out toys? What an idiot.
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“McDonald’s use of toys undercuts parental authority and exploits young children’s developmental immaturity…”
How?
Parents are still the ones that decide where to buy what food to feed their children. Blaming a company’s marketing tactic, and strong-arming that company out of its freedom to operate its own businesses, just to cover up one’s own inability or unwillingness to say “no” to one’s own kids (i.e., to act like a parent), is absurd.
The same ridiculous statement could be said of every toy ad airing on Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network.
How about teaching the kids basic awareness and responsibility? Not just exchanging equal impotent whines with them, as though having completely forgotten who’s the parent and who’s the child, and them blaming the world for making parenting less than trivial. Somehow, our parents and grandparents managed to do this? What’s gone so wrong with us that we cannot?
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
This lawsuit was supposed to be in the interest of the public, but a large number of people seem to be speaking out against it.
Concerned citizens and parents attacked the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s (CSPI) Facebook page regarding their potential lawsuit against McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys.
Read the posts outraged parents left on CPSI’s Facebook: http://freetochooseourmeals.com/parents-attack-center-science-public-interests-facebook-page-mcdonalds-lawsuit/
Bob Cutler, CEO of Creative Consumer Concepts (C3), addressed CSPI’s ridiculous claims and the possibility of the unnecessary lawsuit. “This lawsuit is CSPI and the government over-reaching. Parents are capable of choosing what their children should eat. This issue pries on public sensitivity for issues such as obesity, the poor or the unemployed, which nobody can stand against without looking completely insensitive,” said Cutler.
FreeToChooseOurMeals.com is for anyone who wants to choose what they eat! Visit Twitter: @ChooseMeals for more information about what you can do to protect consumer choice and stop these ridiculous issues.
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Is it really that hard to tell your children NO!
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I ate double qp’s with cheese twice a day for my entire pregnancy. My daughter has been raised on a combination on good home cooked foods and yes HAPPY MEALS! I weigh 110lbs at 5’3″ and my daughter now 13, weighs a whopping 95lbs! Yeah, must be the damn toys in the happy meals right? FOOLS!
No need to directly market to kids when the food is not something we want our kids to even have in the first place.
Offer adult marketing to entice the adults not the kids! The people who see this as being a waste probably ate too much fast food when they were younger….brain isnt fully developed :)
Smart Mom! Great example!