my parents wouldn't EVER let me have junk food, pop, or fast food.

What did I do when I got out on my own? Ya, I went nuts and ate it like crazy.

damned if you do, damned if you don't

just gotta do your best.

DH believes Happy Meals are a rite of childhood passage and I remind him they came out when WE were in high school. He does believe that DD will grow up with some kind of complex if she can't wax poetically about getting Happy Meals as a child.

Before we go banning Happy Meals, take a look at the kid's menus at ANY restaurant - no matter what they call it, it's breaded chicken fingers, fries, mac and cheese, pizza, and sugary drinks. I have outright BANNED DD from getting "beige" food anymore. No more fries, nothing fried. Roadhouse - a place known for steaks - has mac and cheese WITH fries for kids!!! YUCK! Until we as parents start demanding changes, it will go on. Cheers!

I agree with you in that the most effective way to hurt a company is by impacting their bottom line. But I also think it's high time we put a stop to advertising targeted at children. Children do not have the critical judgement skills required to asses advertising. Your children do not always ask you what everything means and you cannot always monitor what they see. The simplest solution is to tell companies to restrict their advertising to adults. If they want you to buy something for your children, then let them "show some backbone" and say it to you directly.

In reality, you know, if people would get the freakin TV's out of the dominant position in their households, about 90% of all marketing to children would vanish.

My kid doesn't know about stuff except if friends tell her, or she sees it in the store, or she runs into it online. We haven't had a TV in years. We get news, weather, etc. online. We have VCR and DVD for movies, we have video game consoles. But not TV.

As a result, she's unusually impatient with commercials. She didn't get bred to have a 3 minute attention span thanks to time in front of TV, and when we watch something that has a commercial (on video) or she hears a commercial on a restaurant music track that is local radio, she thinks it's stupid, why would anybody want to spend their time listening to that stuff.

We live about 500 yards from McDonalds, and within 3 blocks of about 15 other food places, so it ain't like they're a secret from her though LOL, and we used to live at those places instead of cooking.

But my point is that the dominant form of media marketing to children is TELEVISION.

Culture-wide, parents choose that.

Most parents work a job, come home, they're exhausted, there's still dinner, cleaning up, errands, chores, whatever, and bedtime. My friends' kids, all of them, spend vastly more time with the TV than their parents, because their parents work for a living and the kid has hours when they are still at work, and there is usually some time in the evening the parents want a little TV so the kid has that too. Plus the little kids tend to live in front of the TV and they are so demanding time/attention-wise that lots of parents are grateful for the TV getting the toddler off their back for awhile, I certainly was back then.

Maybe the issue isn't just McDonald's advertising, or that parents allow that food, but that parents allow that advertising. Sure, they'd see little things elsewhere, but only an infintesimal fraction of what they see on TV.

PJ

Hmmm. No, that's not "owning" anything. The cigarrette line is an inflammatory statement at best. My mother coughs blood due to her emphysema. Please dont tell me feeding your child 4 nuggets once a month is the same thing. Don't even go there.

Trying heroin once might not hurt you. But it also might addict you or kill you. Lets not be comparing apples and oranges here.

Let's not even get into the issue of paying for healthcare, because there are a LOT of different causes of these diseases that need to be treated. Lets not go blaming the "fat" people.

Yes, RightNow, unfortunately everyone misses the point. As I already stated, there are many different issues being debated at once. Sorry for those that think I have "no experience" and are only debating one thing. Silly me, I thought we've moved past the regulating choices thing.

I fully understand that I am not a five year old, thanks. My point is that my daddy took on the "burden" of telling me NO. And teaching me not to be a mindless consumerist sheep. Which is why today I dont fall into marketing ploys so much. I assume you teach your daughter these things too. So you don't have to worry.

Yes, Mcdonalds is mostly crap food. But why are you all acting like they are Nazi's for advertising food to children? Ronald Mcdonald has been around for how long?

Forget it. The zealots are out in full swing.

I wasn't really talking to you personally, sorry if it got interpreted that way. Sometimes the internet is a limited medium of communication. :-)

PJ

ban the happy meals and the kids will eat the Big Macs, large fries and huge soda's that their parents eat... talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

at least if the kiddies are eating mcnuggets and small fries, and a small soda, their is some semblance of portion control...with the ban, that goes completely out the window.

I know you werent. I was agreeing with you about missing the point. I missed some points myself. I was debating one thing initially, then it morphed into something else

AGAIN, let me just say, I'm not saying Mcdonalds SHOULD market to children. I am simply saying the clown needs to stop being blamed for it all, and that the liverpool gesture is futile. (PS and that governments shouldnt tell people what is healthy or not. )

Carry on with your regularly scheduled thread

Yes. I also need to reread the article. Are they banning all McD's advertisements, or just not offering happy meals?

I can't control what they do, nor do I want to. I can only control what I do.

It isn't a matter of taking sides with the clown, but rather an issue of just how much government intervention/regulation we are willing to accept in our lives. Personally, I'd much rather have the option to turn off the TV, drive past McD's instead of stopping, and any number of other things than have the government regulate what can and can't be served by a restaurant, toys as incentive included.

Now, that said, I do not have much of a problem with regulations that restrict advertising to segments of the population, like children....although the whole idea that we have to "protect" kids from the big-bad corporations out there does smack of being ridiculous IMO when it comes to food and eating out....because ultimately, as a parent, I make the decision as to where we will and will not eat - not a marketer or advertiser.

just wondering... doesn't the US have guidelines for advertising to children?

here are the Canadian regs.
http://www.adstandards.com/en/Stand...nGuidelines.asp

Exactly!

Good grief, I wrote a blog post about that ages ago.....I still refuse to order anything off the kids' menus for DS.....he can have something from the adult menu (I'll plate it for him and take the rest in a doggy-bag when it gets to the table) or make him a plate from what we're eating. It never ceases to amaze me - the crap they have on kids' menus - and restaurants want you to think they're doing you a favor with the price? Puh-leez!

A couple of weeks ago, DH, DS and me went out to lunch at a local Italian restaurant....kids menu featured a half-dozen pasta options.....all carbs! When I told the waitress DS would have the garden salad topped with grilled chicken breast she asked "are you sure he'll eat that?" I wanted to smack her - for saying it like she did in front of him! UGH Yes, he ate all the chicken, the tomatoes and cucumbers, and the cheese that was on top....just a few bites of the lettuce.....and the waitress was "amazed" (her words) when she was clearing our table when we were done.

We're not blaming the fat people; we're blaming McDonalds.

What you might not realize is that the city council (or whatever) of Liverpool considers policy like this because of MONEY. The cost of care for people who make unhealthy choices is breaking Liverpool and the rest of the country, if the news and government reports are to be believed. In their very limited ability to improve the health of their citizens and of their public coffers, they place the onus on the one benefiting from public money.

There are a lot of different causes of these diseases that need to be treated, and we'll presume that Liverpool aims to pursue remedies to those causes as well. Is there a comprehensive regulatory package being considered in Liverpool encompassing solutions to all those different causes? Or is the Happy Meal Bill the only regulation that made the papers?



Let's give McDonald's some credit. Let's guess that they have figured out that Happy Meals make people buy more food, not less. Probably, the whole reason the promotion has lasted 30 years is that they are making more money with it than without it. We could just as easily envision that if there were no Happy Meals, that parents would just feed their kids part of their own order.

Do we know for sure if a Happy Meal costs less than the sum of its ala carte items?

that's nuts about the waitress Regina, but totally true.

I had a project in which I had kids prepare salads and try out their favourites. Hands down the kids (aged 4 to 14) loved the Cobb. their parents were shocked the kids ate the salads and asked for more!