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California's Santa Clara County Bans Happy Meal Toys
WrongSizeGlass writes "The L.A. Times is reporting that Santa Clara County officials have voted to ban toys and other promotions that restaurants offer with high-calorie children's meals. 'This ordinance prevents restaurants from preying on children's love of toys' to sell high-calorie, unhealthful food, said Supervisor Ken Yeager, who sponsored the measure. 'This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes.' Supervisor Donald Gage, who voted against the measure, said, 'If you can't control a 3-year-old child for a toy, God save you when they get to be teenagers.' The vote was 3 - 2 in favor of the ban."
...this is a great idea. I had to institute a rule in my house that no toys were allowed with food. I found that when I forbid the kids from having the toys, when I gave them a choice of restaurants for dinner, they were much more likely to chose one with better food. It seems that the toys were a large part of the draw...take that away, and they were much more likely to eat something healthy.
First, let me say this. I'm totally on board with Jamie Oliver, love what the guy is trying to do, etc etc. I think his "revolution" show is only vaguely based on the reality of the people he's covering, but he's gotta sell ads for his network so he can keep buying food for his family, and it doesn't detract from the good that such a revolution could do.
Having said all that... Here's a tip: If the kid never learns that McDonald's meals come with toys, the toys cannot be used to sell the food.
But the shitty plastic toys are as bad for brain development as the shitty fatty food is for body development. And the shitty mind pablum TV that the shitty food and the shitty toys are advertised on is even worse.
Stay away from the King, the Clown, and the young girl with the red pigtails. There is absolutely nothing inside those four walls that your kid needs, or that is in any way good for your kid.
We don't need laws against using plastic crap to sell crap food. We need to make good healthy food as affordable as crap food, and show people how easy it is to feed it to their kids. We need to get rid of the plastic crap and go back to durable toys that last and foster imagination and free play. We don't need our congresscritters to pass "Save the Children" laws to do this for us, because those almost always backfire.
(Example from the show: like making Jamie take his pasta-and-vegetables off the food line because it didn't have enough vegetables, then stating that french fries DO count as a full vegetable when it was replaced with prepared crap).
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
When I used to get my Happy Meal as a child, I was more entertained by the toy than my food. I began to have weight problems as I grew older because I saw food as an event, a fun thing, a highlight of my day, instead of something to keep me fueled. High calorie foods aren't healthy, but they don't cause fat kids. Children with normal, healthy eating habits will take two bites of their burger and then run along to play with their new toy. When parents use food as a reward ("You did good on your report card, lets order pizza!") you have a problem. When I got to my mid to later teens, most of my friends had normal eating habits -- they didn't get excited by food like me. I picked up on that, and changed my eating habits to view food as fuel, not fun. It took about three years, but I've lost over 50 pounds and have a proper build complete with muscle tone. Bottom line: unhealthy food itself isn't the problem, it's how we view food in our daily lives. If you snack to pass the time, even when you're not hungry, if you go back for seconds after your pains are gone, you have unhealthy eating habits. Eat to live, don't live to eat. It's a habit our culture in America breeds -- food for fun. Unhealthy food isn't the root cause though (even if it contributes.)
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
And Supervisor Donald Gage agrees with you. The problem is, we've tried that for decades and it isn't working. The "personal responsibility" people stamp their feet and complain "It's the parents' responsibility! It's the parents' responsibility! (stamp, stamp, stamp...)". Hey, why don't you stamp your feet a little harder? Maybe, then, all of those parents will suddenly take up an interest in pediatric nutrition.
"(stamp, stamp, stamp!) Kids shouldn't... they shouldn't. Shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't!". Yeah, but you know what? They do. In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice but, in practice, there is. You can yell and complain about responsibility and the nanny state and all that jazz, but, ultimately, it fails to actually fix the problem. So, the county supervisors have decided to try this. And I think you have to admit that, regardless of whether you think that the county should have passed this ordinance, the restaurants are throwing the toys in there to help peddle a product which should probably be peddled on their merits of its nutrition.
This issue reminds me of the Simpsons episiode with "Mt. Splashmore", where a commercial for the water park teaches the kids the "Take me to Mt. Splashmore" song and then instructs the kids to go sing it to their parents over and over again. Or, in "The Corporation", I think it was, where the market research lady interviewed parents about their nagging children. The parents thought it was research into how to get kids to nag less but it was really studying how to get the kids to nag their parents more effectively so that the parents would cave in and buy more often. I think you're naive if you don't think these companies aren't pouring millions of dollars into ways of getting around this "personal responsibility" firewall, and the toys are just one part of their arsenal.
For example, even when kids don't really have a say, they do. You even admit "The toy is just a bonus to keep our child busy long enough so we can finish our meals with some level of peace.". So, the toy does help bring you in to that particular restaurant chain. Besides, I can use the "parental responsibility" argument on you. I know a couple that actually takes parenting seriously. When we all go out to dinner with their kid, their kid finishes first, and then knows to sit there, quietly, while we all chat a while. She knows that, if she starts getting fidgety or rambunctious, things are going to turn out worse for her in the long run. So, we can always finish our meals in peace... toy or no toy. But then, that's because they feel that they should be responsible parents.