Should Ronald McDonald Retire?

Parents need to do their job as parents and keep fast food as an occasional treat rather than a mainstay of their child’s diet. When they do allow their child to have fast food, they’re the ones decide whether their child gets fries and soda or fruit and milk. If they can’t say no to their kid, that problem rests squarely on their own shoulders. It isn’t the job of a restaurant, grocery store, or food manufacturer to make their products undesirable or to market them in such a way as to be of little or no interest to consumers.

I respect CAI’s position that marketing directly to children is an enormous problem and there are many places and people who do not do appropriate filtering of information that reaches kids. Studies show that children who are exposed to marketing of any kind, not just food, are fatter in the long run than those who aren’t.

That said, banning the character isn’t really the way to go about it. This is like cutting off your hand because you touched poison ivy.

My kids do not watch any television that has commercials in it. We do not subscribe to magazines that carry advertizing towards children. My kids get home cooked meals every night of the week and have been to fast food restaurants on average of once or twice a year and that’s only on long car trips. They know Ronald as the character associated with the fundraising drive they do at school each year for The Ronald McDonald house. You know, the one that provides housing to children and families when children are undergoing serious long-term medical treatments, like cancer.

Yes marketing junk food to kids is wrong, but let’s also have a little bit of personal accountability and instead of putting time, energy, and resources into eliminating a cartoon let’s put it into educating people on nutrition, how to cook easily and inexpensively at home, and then watch as they make better choices all on their own.

Perhaps it’s my personal bias, but this site seems to spend a lot of time telling people what not to eat instead of showing them not only what TO eat, but how to make it. Being told not to buy junk food is of little help to someone who doesn’t know how to do anything else. Cooking is a lost art that needs to be taught. Direct people to places where they can learn HOW to eat better instead of just telling them what not to do.

My kids don’t live in a vacuum and I have no problem at all telling them, “No.”

McDonald’s, for us, is “traveling” food.  We go there when we’re driving long distances on vacation.  So it’s a treat to our kids.  We order Happy Meals and are happy to get the toy (something to keep the kids entertained during the trip), but we order milk and apple dippers (no dipping sauce) for our kids.  In fact, whenever we see McDonald’s our son says that he loves McDonald’s – “because they have apple dippers!”  On trips, we’ll even sometimes go to McDonald’s for just the apple dippers and we buy the happy meal toy as an extra charge!

One funny – maybe ironic – part about all this is that even though we go to McDonald’s occasionally and our kids watch kids’ TV which is inundated with commercials, someone once referred to Ronald McDonald when talking to our kids and they had absolutely no idea who he was.  (I sort of felt sorry for them, to tell you the truth – it was sort of like we had kept this funny clown a secret from them.)

I gotta say, I really don’t have a huge problem with McDonald’s – it serves our family well – but I do have a problem with everyone in the US trying to blame other people/institutions/companies for their own problems.

I generally agree with posters who say that parents need to exercise responsibility. And if that were the only factor, then I’d agree and say we should leave Ronald alone. But that’s not the case here.

Your friendly federal government has subsidised corn. So, feed for the cow (for beef and dairy), sweetener in the Coke and ketchup all are less expensive to produce. Consumer research shows that food decisions are made based on taste, convenience and price. The subsidy is making the cost of saying “yes” to McDonald’s easier for mom and dad. Ronald helps to seal the deal for a portion of those parents.

I wish it would be easy to remove these price supports that contribute to a glut of inexpensive unhealthy foods, but there’s darned little chance of that happening. As a distant second prize, I’m happy to support physican and individuals who cast shame on McDonalds for selling directly to the children.

I’d note too that this article is not about parents abdicating responsibility. Read the whole statement that is linked from the article. It is also not a call for legislation to restrict Ronald’s First Amendment rights. It’s a request for corporate responsibility.

So McDonald’s argument that obesity rates have risen in parallel to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle (true and true) is blaming everyone else? “Blaming everyone else” seems to be the problem here; parents projecting their own inability to control/maintain their children’s diets onto a corporation that feeds people cheap.

I have no sympathy for impotent parents, or support for consumer groups who protect consumers from everyone but themselves.