Tuesday’s elections may have brought some disappointment to Democrats, or perhaps even to Arizonans hoping they’d finally have a club card, but in San Francisco citizens were mourning another loss: the toy that came with their Happy Meal.
The San Francisco board of supervisors banned restaurants from including a free toy with meals containing certain amounts of calories, sugar and fat. The first of its kind to be enforced in a major city, the ordinance will also require restaurants to include fruits and vegetables with all children’s meals that come with toys.
Contrasting the feeling in San Francisco Monday night after the World Series, to that felt after Election Day, California Restaurant Assn. spokesman Daniel Conway said, “One day you’re world champions, and the next day, no toys for you."
The measure passed with eight votes, enough to override the expected veto from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Coincidentally, the vote came just hours after McDonald’s reintroduced its famous McRib sandwich, the company’s international, fast food phenomenon. Apparently the petition to “Save the McRib” finally paid off.
Those opposed to the measure are the very people for whom it was created, or at least that’s what McDonald’s spokeswoman Danya Proud wants us to believe. In a statement in The Los Angeles Times, Proud said the measure is “not what our customers want, nor is it something they asked for.”
But the ordinance isn’t about giving people what they want; it’s about giving them what they need.
This assumption also came under attack by Proud, who argued that, “Parents tell us it's their right and responsibility — not the government's — to make their own decisions and to choose what's right for their children." Yet, in a nation where the Centers for Disease Control reports that childhood obesity has more than tripled in the last 30 years, we have to wonder if parents have been making the right decisions for their kids. Kids may want the food, but it’s parents who buy it for them — they certainly haven’t been piling in the mini-van and taking themselves through the drive-thru.
While Happy Meals are marketed toward children between the ages of 3 and 9, no 9-year-old is responsible for deciding what he or she eats. Making a toy marketed toward children the center of the ban puts the focus on the children when in reality the choice of what to eat has never really been theirs to make.
By overlooking the role of parents in this situation, the ordinance takes an ineffective approach to promoting change. Taking away the toy only punishes the children and downplays the parents’ part in enforcing their child’s unhealthy eating habits in the first place.
Perhaps banning these toys benefits the parent more than the child.
Take away the toy and parents don’t have to choose between giving their kids the 780-calorie Happy Meal and feeling guilty for denying their child whatever youthful bliss can come from a 3 and a half-inch figurine.
But the question of “Why do the kids want this food?” still needs to be addressed. Stephen Gardner, litigation director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, seems to have the answer.
In a statement he made on behalf of CSPI, Gardner said, “McDonald’s use of toys […] exploits young children’s developmental immaturity — all this to induce children to prefer foods that may harm their health.”
Under this assertion, these miniature figures, the latest of which are from DreamWorks’ Megamind, can be likened to the image of Joe Camel or a Marlboro-smoking Santa Claus. But do kids want the meal for the toy or the taste?
The measure operates under the assumption that the toys are the main incentive behind children’s lust for burgers and fries, rather than the food’s scientifically perfected mixture of fat, sugar and sodium. Yet, if we’re to say that toys have the power to start a trend in children eating unhealthy foods, then we should be able to say that toys are capable of inciting the alternative as well — I doubt any kid would be willing to choose a meal with a burger and toy over a meal with veggies and toy though.
That is why it is so important that adults play an active role in helping their children develop healthier lifestyles and eating habits.
Banning toys won’t end childhood obesity, and it doesn’t address the role parents’ decisions about eating plays in influencing the health of their children. The most we can hope for is that it will serve as a wakeup call to adults guilty of perpetuating the problem.
Until parents can take responsibility for fostering healthy lifestyles in their children, let’s give the kids back their toys. Children don’t need to be punished for the decisions they never made — the decisions their parents made for them.
Send your thoughts to Jess at jrstone3@asu.edu
