In recent days, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to ban restaurants from offering toys with calorie packed children’s meals. In doing so, San Francisco joins Santa Clara County, CA which banned toys from unhealthy children’s meals just last spring.
The ban goes into effect at the end of 2011, so fast food chains like McDonald’s have time to change the ingredients in the ever popular “Happy Meal” to total less than 600 calories and under 35% fat in order to continue including toys. The Happy Meal in its current form (cheeseburger, soda, fries) totals 640 calories.
Will this Nanny State Strategy work to reduce skyrocketing childhood obesity or deter parents from lining up at the drive thru to buy these unhealthy meals for their kids?
In a word, NO!
Perhaps I should add an “are you kidding?” onto that statement (I really dislike being sarcastic but it is just so hard not to be when stories like this come along).
First of all, reducing the caloric content of the Happy Meal from 640 to 599 calories to comply with the ban should not be a difficult feat for the chemists that work their Ingestible Magic at food production facilities that churn out McDonald’s signature franchise foods.
I can just imagine the likely conversation between the Chief Muckety Muck at McDonald’s and the Food Engineering Manager responsible for the team which synthesizes the Happy Meal:
“No problem, Chief! We’ll just replace a little more meat with MSG laced soy protein isolate and that should do the trick. Nobody will even know the difference!”
Chemicals, after all, taste just as good as the real thing – even better, right? Eating nondecomposing fast food that is essentially more chemicals than nourishment only fools the stomach for a brief period of time so the customer comes screaming back through the drive thru even more quickly for another fix!
Hooray for profits! This new law could really get the bottom line smokin’ !
The Government Cannot Legislate Health
Anytime the government tries to legislate health, there will be trouble. Look at the law that banned transfats in New York City just a few years back. Did this eliminate unhealthy factory fats from processed foods?
Absolutely not.
Food manufacturers just nimbly switched from one unhealthy factory fat (transfats) to another, even more unhealthy, form of factory fat (interesterified fats) and made money off the deal through advertising their new and improved “transfat free” fare!
On a side note, isn’t it interesting how the danger of consuming interesterified fats has not even made one media news story yet? By the time the danger of these fats becomes widely known (my guess is 5-10 years), many more folks will have had heart attacks and strokes from consuming these frankenfats.
For another example, look what happened when Congress started corn and soy subsidies way back when. Now you can drive across America’s heartland and all you can see for miles and miles are fields of GMO corn and soy. Do most conventional farmers want to grow much of anything else?
Heck no. There’s not as much money to be had in fruits and vegetables!
What’s more, the diet of Americans has become so overwhelmingly dominated by corn and soy that tests of the source of the carbon material in their tissues come up overwhelmingly corn and soy dominant. In one test, a strand of hair from an American (Dr. Sanjay Gupta, no less!) came up as 69% corn based carbon! In contrast, a strand of hair from someone living in Italy tests around 5% corn based carbon.
Ultimately, then, it is up to the parents and caregivers to “just say no” to fast food for children. There will always be snake oil salesmen like the fast food franchises that are more than willing to sell you junk – toy included – for your hard earned cash. No governmental edict will ever change that.
Personal responsibility for health is ultimately the best solution.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Hi Sarah, These new Happy meal laws are both in my backyard, so to speak. I wrote a post poking fun at the new ordinance on Silicon Valley Moms Blog. The funniest part is that in Santa Clara County the difference between a toy and no toy was a slice of cheese! The cheeseburger put the meal over the calorie limit. Craaaazy! Here is the post:
Enjoy!
Hi Anon, thanks for finding that typo. I've fixed it now. Definitely not the easiest word to spell!
That's just scary. Mostly because the public at large does not know about these things unless someone else educates them. Kudos to you on that front. Interesting about the body levels of corn based carbon. I keep trying to tell my parents that the animals' diet makes a difference and was horrified to learn that my most easily accessible farm raised chicken was raised on a diet of proprietary corn and soy based feed. Just the two things my daughter is most allergic to! And people think that doesn't make a difference? Let me tell you it does. I wonder now if some of her untraceable reactions were due to the corn and soy based molecules left in the chicken. You really ARE what you eat. And people wonder why corn and soy are two of the most fast increasing allergies in kids. Just look at any processed food label. We're saturated with the stuff! I love your title of frankenfats, I think I'll use it when I talk to other people. At least the fat is labeled as interesterified in the ingredient list, right? There's enough hidden stuff out there as well. Phooey on the food industry.
Hi Sarah, I don't mean to be nitpicky, but I believe the new fat is called "interesterified". I only know this because I read it for the first time a couple of weeks ago on the ingredient list of a bag of tortillas. Since I have never heard of it, I googled it up and found out. And my thoughts were the same as yours – when will the medical community find out how bad this is for people? Basically the same path trans fat took…
By the way, I didn't know companies can include toys if the calories are under 600. I just assumed thy are not allowed to include any toys period!
When I heard of the ban two thoughts popped in my head simultaniously.
If we want food freedom for ourselves, we have to allow food freedom for everyone. Even the those who think fast food is food and good for children. I'm in a fight for the right to eat foods I deem necessary for my health. If I allow anyone else's rights to get trampled I will definitely lose my battle.
The calories and fat ARE NOT WHAT ARE MAKING OUR CHILDREN SICK! What makes our nations children fat and sick is the processed garbage the so-called experts push on them. THEY NEED FAT AND CALORIES TO DEVELOP. Sorry for shouting, but this is a sore subject for me. My child eats a high calorie, high fat diet and remains thin and in perfect health. I'm so frustrated with people whose health and that of their children isn't close to my son's telling me that what I feed him is unhealthy. The proof is in the pudding. And for heaven's sake, keep the whole milk as an option. It's bad enough I can't get real milk anywhere outside my home but low-fat and milk for kids is just plain wrong.
As I said, I had these thoughts competing in my head as soon as I heard this ridiculous story.
RIGHT ON THE MONEY, Sarah. I don't always completely agree with you points of view (but still enjoy reading them, if only because it makes me re-examine things), but on this issue you have very eloquently worded the way I see the situation. Thank you for that. Keep up the honest intentions and good work.
Bella Issakova
Now that I'm being educated in the WAPF principles, I am mortified that I fed my kids what I fed them… and they lived! (They are both upstairs eating sourdough pancakes with creme fraiche and homemade fermented chocolate sauce! And raw butter.)
Get the gov out of my food and drugs and anything else I care to ingest. They have not made me healthier. Au contraire! They can't legislate health anymore than they can legislate morality — one thing our forefathers cautioned against.
To our gov, it is immoral to feed our children happy meals so they must protect us from ourselves and make it a crime. Won't stop people any better than making drugs, raw milk, driving too fast and jaywalking criminal offenses. Sigh.
Im with Farmgirl Cyn!! I was ready for an argument too! 🙂 But I agree 100%! We need to just keep spreading the word and educating people and let the free market run those nasty food like substances out of town!
This is so crazy! If the government was looking out for the people, they would ban all non-food-items that are intended to be eaten. But the government is, as usual, missing the mark.
I really had NO idea what your take on this was going to be, and I was preparing myself mentally for a rebuttal….but….I AGREE WITH YOU 100%! I don't WANT the govt. telling me what I can and cannot eat/feed my children. It's none of their business. My choices. My consequences. The same goes for my raw milk consumption and my right to refuse immunizations.
Excellent commentary once again, Sarah!