McDonald’s Now Sells to Kids Through Goats

Not even close. McDonald’s idea of nutri­tion edu­ca­tion is sim­ple: just eat at McDonald’s.

In the first ani­mated ad, a child’s pet goat is derided for eat­ing every­thing in sight, from the kid’s base­ball to his father’s hair. The solu­tion? The goat needs a “bet­ter diet,” defined by fruit and dairy the ad says—but where to find such strange items? Jump in the car and head to McDonald’s, where the goat becomes “strong as an ox” from down­ing the apple slices and choco­late milk con­tained in Happy Meals. The ad ends with the goat chomp­ing on the Happy Meals box. (Apparently, the goat does not eat the child’s toy.)

Problem solved.

The mes­sage sent to chil­dren? Everything at home is bad to eat. The place to find healthy food is at McDonald’s. In a mat­ter of sec­onds, McDonald’s man­ages to cir­cum­scribe the entire uni­verse of healthy foods to the two items found in a Happy Meal, all under the guise of “nutri­tion edu­ca­tion.” You can’t get much more twisted than that.

For McDonald’s “bal­anced eat­ing” is accom­plished within the con­fines of the Happy Meal. But apple slices and choco­late milk don’t bal­ance out chicken nuggets and French fries, the other two com­po­nents of the Happy Meal depicted in the ad. (Moreover, by most nutri­tion stan­dards apples and choco­late milk are actu­ally treats, not sta­ples of a healthy diet in a way that broc­coli is, for example.)

Even if the ad cam­paign was less self-serving and actu­ally attempted to edu­cate chil­dren about health­ful eat­ing in a mean­ing­ful way, this is not McDonald’s job.

I don’t know any critic of McDonald’s that has been beg­ging the com­pany to “to pro­mote nutri­tion and/or active lifestyle mes­sages” to chil­dren. Quite the oppo­site: We want McDonald’s to stop tar­get­ing chil­dren, period. Stop using toys to lure chil­dren, stop pro­mot­ing Ronald McDonald in schools and com­mu­ni­ties, and stop mar­ket­ing to chil­dren as young as age two online at web­sites like Ronald.com, McWorld.com, and HappyMeal.com. We want McDonald’s to just get out of the way to let par­ents do their job to teach chil­dren how to eat right.

Notably, in its press release announc­ing the new cam­paign, McDonald’s felt com­pelled to reas­sure the pub­lic: “Ronald McDonald will con­tinue to be an ambas­sador of hap­pi­ness and joy for chil­dren of all ages in ongo­ing McDonald’s adver­tis­ing and local com­mu­nity programs.”

That’s a relief, because I was really wor­ried that goat was tak­ing over.

With this new cam­paign, McDonald’s is mak­ing a des­per­ate attempt to silence its crit­ics by appear­ing to care about children’s health. But what the fast food giant has actu­ally accom­plished is yet one more way to exploit children’s emo­tional vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties through the use of ani­mals and cartoons.

And par­ents, your job to help your kids eat right just got even harder.

Please sign this let­ter urg­ing McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner to stop mar­ket­ing children.

Michele Simon

Michele is a pub­lic health lawyer who has been research­ing and writ­ing about the food indus­try and food pol­i­tics since 1996. Visit her site at www.EatDrinkPolitics.com

    

Kelle Louaillier is exec­u­tive direc­tor of Corporate Accountability International.