McDonalds Facing Lawsuit For Happy Meal Toys

cosm writes "Looks like personal responsibility died a little bit again today. From the article: 'A watchdog group says giving away toys with Happy Meals contributes to childhood obesity, and threatens to sue. The [watchdog] organization on Tuesday served the fast food giant with a letter expressing its intent to sue if toys are not removed. The letter is legally required in several states before lawsuits can be brought under consumer protection statutes. ..."McDonald's is the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children," Stephen Gardner, litigation director for the advocacy group, said in a statement. "McDonald's use of toys undercuts parental authority and exploits young children's developmental immaturity."'"

Comments

If you are that fat

[Rasperin]

You arent eating a happy meal.

Re:If you are that fat

[JWSmythe]

    Is it better? It costs us in the food resources that are being wasted over the lifetime of the morbidly obese, medical costs, and dedication of medical professionals to help with patients who aren't willing to help themselves. Consider the other additional problems, where ambulances have to be made larger to accommodate the oversized patients, larger tools (everything from stretchers to MRI machines), and even when they pass, oversized accommodations must be made at the cemetery.

    I went to the doctor recently, and joked that I am fat (I'm 155 lbs at 5'8"). He laughed, but pointed out that they had a new scale. The old one only went to 400 pounds. My doctor personally sent a person to a large animal hospital, because they couldn't find an MRI machine that could take anyone that size. Even if you look at the high end of a height/weight chart, someone who's 6'8", the high normal weight should be 216. We're not talking about extremely muscular athletes, we're talking about people who can't see their own shoes to tie them, because too many fat folds are in the way.

    Even someone very muscular, like Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was winning body building trophies was only 250lbs at 6'2". There's no excuse for anyone to be 350+ pounds.

    We're going to kill ourselves, and that's not just the morbidly obese. They are putting a huge demand on the food supply, which hurts everyone who wants to eat. When you hear about the morbidly obese and their diet, they eat enough in a day to feed a normal healthy person for a week (or more).

Parental responsibility anyone?

[Envy Life]

This watchdog group is implying parents need help keeping their kids away from McDonalds. Are parents incapable of saying "no honey, we're going to eat in tonight" or "no we're going to ... instead" or "no you can't have a Big Mac and fries, but you can have the grilled chicken sandwich and a fruit salad." When do lawyers become more important to our society than parental responsibility? It's just all backwards.

Re:Parental responsibility anyone?

[Locke2005]

In the words of the immortal childcare expert Bender, "Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?"

The sooner your child learns to accept "no" for an answer without whining about it, the better off they are going to be in life. In marriage, we learn to expect "no" for an answer!

Re:Parental responsibility anyone?

[PFI_Optix]

No, you can't have McDonald's again today.

Why?

Because you had it yesterday.

Why can't I have it again?

Because it's not good for you.

Why?

Because it has things in it that will make you fat.

I wanna be anorexic when I grow up!

-----

My boys get their choice of restaurant foods once a week. It's usually McNuggets and apple slices from McDonald's or a grilled cheese sandwich and banana from Sonic. Our choices are limited here, so that's really all they know that they like. They've been told that having too much food from places like that is bad, but that's all they've been told. I for one am not going to create body image problems in my 3- and 5-year old sons by telling them that they'll get fat if they eat too much. I simply control what they eat so that they develop healthy appetites.

Children do need to learn to accept that their parents understand things that are above them. I do my best to answer all the questions my kids have. They are already both considered gifted and are well above their age levels on education, but some things are beyond their comprehension and I'm not going to tell them something that might result in them completely misunderstanding my answers.

Reality check

[Locke2005]

As long as you understand that McDonald's, Chuck E. Cheese, et. al are playgrounds subsidized by food sales, I don't see why anyone should have a problem with it. Just don't delude yourself that their primary aim is to provide nutrition. Sounds like some parents are incapable of saying "no" to their kids, so they want the government to do if for them!

Re:Bad analogy

[Monkeedude1212]

Right. He's not trying to make them fat, he's just trying to stuff them!

Re:Old News

[Monkeedude1212]

But, it's cheaper to eat McD's that actual fresh food from a grocery store -- both in terms of $$, and time.

Definately NOT in money. At least not here in Canada.

Spaghetti noodles: $3
Extra Lean Hamburger meat: $5.50
2 Cans of Tomato Paste: $3
Stock of Celery: 89 cents
2L juice: $1.50
Grand Total: about 15 dollars after Tax.

This will easily get you 5 full meals, more than any meal you can buy at McDonalds with any combo.

There are TONS of easy meals you can spend 20 minutes cooking and have microwavable leftovers for the rest of the week. Chicken and Rice with any veggies you want is another great combo.

Just most people would prefer going through a drive thru 5 times a week as opposed to spending 20 minutes cooking 2 nights a week. It baffles me.

** notice from reality **

[FuckingNickName]

1. The brain is a biological organ like any other, able to be manipulated and programmed - "personal responsibility" is a philosophical fiction with a certain limited degree of practical application (e.g. to legal principles) but which cannot be applied to a scientific analysis of animal behaviour;

2. Few /.ers may be in kids' advertising, but it works and it works and then it works some more - if you think there is no problem with encouraging bad behaviour "because no-one's forcing you to do it" then you ought to question your premises;

3. In particular, if you think anyone should be able to make a buck as long as they're not putting a gun to your head, your position is one of self-interest and your opinion is motivated by creating a world full of people fucking each other over;

4. "Parents need to acquiesce less to kids' demands" and "McDonalds should stop pounding kids with advertising to help them get fat" are not mutually exclusive. If you wonder why everyone's eating out and getting fat, perhaps you should cut through the screen of political correctness and check out how families were generally arranged 30 years ago - who isn't at home now to make the meals?

Missing the point

[wonkavader]

This summary, and even the NYT article seem to be missing the point.

The point is not that MacDonald's serves crap. We all know MacDonald's serves crap. Even MacDonald's knows MacDonald's serves crap, which is why they are constantly saying "look! We have these non-crap things on the menu, TOO!" (And even when they do that, they point to their alternative to fries -- apples you can dip in a sugar mixture. Brilliant.)

The issue is advertising to children.

To quote the article: "Citing toys aimed at promoting the latest "Shrek" movie, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said that the plastic promotions lure children into McDonald's restaurants where they are then likely to order food that is too high in calories, fat and salt."

The important part of this line should be: "Citing toys aimed at promoting the latest "Shrek" movie, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said that the plastic promotions lure children into McDonald's restaurants" Because that is ILLEGAL.

Advertising to children is not legal. It's something that we, as a society, have looked the other way on for many, many years, but there are laws aimed at preventing it. When you advertise to children, you externalize the cost of advertising to the parents because the children will nag the parents until they cave. Influencing adults costs a lot more, when you do it directly, and sometimes it's just impossible. Many parents wouldn't dream of ever taking their kids to MacDonald's, but cave when they're shrilly begged for MacDonald's for the 400th time. You want to keep your children healthy by keeping them from eating that crap, but it's far, far easier to cave than to fight your kids every single day, and even if you do, their sitter or grandmother or even their teacher on a field trip will cave. It's practically an irresistible force.

I once talked to a MacDonald's ad man (a woman, in this case) who proudly pointed out to me that Ronald never eats the burgers. You see, any MacDonald's ad is broken into segments. The entertainment segments don't advertise. The advertisement is only the parts where Ronald isn't on screen. The parts where Ronald is on screen is apparently a friggin' PSA.

The toys in the Happy meal are supposedly a value item to help an adult make a judgment to buy a happy meal because it will both feed and entertain his/her child. That's value. That's also bullshit. The toy, as we all know, is there because kids will want to go to MacDonald's to get the toy.

They're advertising to children. They need to stop.

The fact that they serve crap is immaterial.