The city of Liverpool (UK) has decided to outlaw McDonald’s happy meal toys in a bid to save chubby kids from an early grave.
The city council pulled no punches saying:“We consider it is high time that cash-hungry vultures like McDonald’s are challenged over their marketing policies which are directly aimed at promoting unhealthy eating among children”
Why the problem?
The city believes that McDonald’s uses happy meal toys to force kids to eat food they don’t actually want.
But are they really that bad?
A single burger contains up to five teaspoons of sugar - which gives you an idea of how unhealthy the whole meal is. The worst offending happy meal is the cheese burger with a chocolate milkshake which weighs in at a wopping 740 calories or in other words 50% of the daily calorie allowance of a child.
Is this the end of McDonald’s?
3 Years ago Liverpool was the first city in the UK to ban smoking, which was seen as the first step in the process of banning smoking across the whole of the UK.
If happy meals go the same as smokes, Macdonalds may be serving their last Happy meal in the UK as early as 2011.
19 Comments Received
July 11th, 2008 @7:38 am
Sweet.
July 11th, 2008 @8:16 am
Right so thats a good thing to do…Ban the bad….
b/c self control is just so old school
lets have the Government control us…lol
July 19th, 2008 @7:13 pm
Most of those toys that all fast food chains put in kids meals are there for one purpose, to make kids associate with going to McDonald’s (for example) could mean I get a toy to play with. Toys are pretty much kids heroin.
July 28th, 2008 @12:39 am
if maccas is banned that would be a tragedy. I agree that they are aiming their marketing at kids but it should be up to the parents whether or how often their child eats bad food, clearly the kid in the image at the top has parents that don’t give a shit what he eats and that is as sad as the people who choose mcdonalds’s marketing target. If we start banning everything that does us damage then we will be the most boring society, not to mention the complete disrespect then for freedom of choice.
July 28th, 2008 @10:57 am
What many do yet know is that McDonald’s officially supports the ungay and lesbian lifestyle, and gave $20,000 to the so-called Gay and Lesbian C. of C.
The queers want to grab off the children, something that they can’t produce themselves on purpose, and Ronald McDonald is going to help.
It is not a family business anymore. Why would anyone want to take their family members there from now on? Ronald M. is now putting the kids at risk for a lethal lifestyle, what with hiv viruses and Aids. I will never go there again.
There is always Wendy’s, Burger King, What-A-Burger and Carl’s Jr.
August 11th, 2008 @5:10 pm
Once again, parents are abdicating their responsibilities to the state. So quit whining about how everything is controlled by the government and you have to rights. They weren’t taken away, you gave them away because it was easier than meeting your obligations.
Peter, get a life, Gays do NOT recruit. You are so full of BS, I am amazed someone hasn’t used you for fertilizer.
September 3rd, 2008 @12:03 am
Playtime is one of the most fundamental parts of childhood development. Children play in a variety of ways with a number of different toys. Each activity has a different affect on development. Toys and other objects are important extensions of a young child.
September 8th, 2008 @8:00 pm
Liberals are idiots and should be banned!
September 12th, 2008 @4:12 am
while i normally weigh in heavily (no pun intended) with the personal responsibility crowd, it should be noted that we dont typically allow children to make whatever decisions they want under the name of personal responsibility.
they are children and as such, are not considered capable of making effective and safe decisions in all cases.
if a significant portion of the adult populace begins to fall into a similar category and their poor habits and decisions impact the group as a whole, i do think it becomes necessary for the state to nanny the incompetents, if only to safeguard the regular adults from the downstream effects.
poor health maintenance is a serious burden to most industrial nations, not only in a direct financial sense, but also to the extent that they fill up hospitals, ERs, and clinics, making it harder for normal sick and injured to receive focused care.
alcoholic consumption is regulated in numerous ways because when abused it poses a potential risk to nearby people.
i think the epidemics of diabetes, heart and liver disease, etc, are very obviously forcing the states hand into at least trying to direct better eating habits as well.
if you think its your right to eat however you want, i will agree with you if you also agree to stay home and die there. do not seek medical care, or a hospital bed. once you do either, you are affecting me, and it is not your right to do so.
September 12th, 2008 @4:28 pm
Liberals are idiots, huh? If the world were conservative we’d all still be sitting in caves trying to decide if rocks are edible.
As for you, Peter Emmy, I don’t even know what you’re ranting about. Go away, write your comment again in English, and give it another go. Perhaps your brain melted from the strain.
September 13th, 2008 @8:41 am
Fine.
I’ll just go to burger king.
;o
September 15th, 2008 @8:57 am
That’s ridiculous!! People should be allowed to decide what they want to eat and parents should be more responsible for what they let their children eat! It’s not McDonalds fault that children are fat it’s the parents of these children who are letting them feed their faces with junk food!! Good lord!! I wish poeple would stop infringing upon our rights as human beings to make our own decisions. No on can smoke inside anymore and soon there’ll be no McDonalds. What on earth will it be next?! Maybe someone will ban mini skirts or men walking around topless. We should be focusing on more important issues than this.
September 15th, 2008 @3:50 pm
“The queers want to grab off the children, something that they can’t produce themselves on purpose, and Ronald McDonald is going to help.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HAHA. HA. You complete banjo-playing f*ckwit.
September 16th, 2008 @5:18 pm
Uhhhh….there is an easy solution to this.
When your kid sees the toys at McDees and screams
Mommy, Daddy!!! Let’s go here!!!!!
Uhhh….just say “No.”
Parents are too nice these days.
It’s time parents became the bad guys.
Nice parents are lazy parents.
September 17th, 2008 @10:39 am
This is a response to the reality of the world. You need well informed consumers for a free market model to work correctly. How many people are *truly* informed about the health of their food? Do you really think that McDonalds is going to inform consumers how bad their food is for them?
Neither a simple free market nor a pure government control model works. They should be in balance. It doesn’t appear that banning the toys is massive government control; it merely puts some constraints on a corporation. Not a big deal.
September 18th, 2008 @3:27 am
If you take away the toys, the kids will just have more time to eat.
In all seriousness, this is obviously a reasonable step to take to make a country healthier, by removing the toys that attract kids. It would definitely help, however it is unlikely to be done unless it is removed in all other fast food retails as well. The definition of toy may also be hard to govern as well with people finding other alternative to give their customers toys (such as just randomly giving toys to kids when their parents order a certain amount of food, and such).
The plan, if it succeeds, is an interesting one, but the decision should rest with parents. As surprising as it is, MCS has actually gotten healthier over the years (though nowhere near as healthy as it should)
@Peter Emmy:
The article was about the unhealthy nature of the food, why did you talk about them giving a minor amount to the “Gay and Lesbian C. of C.” (which I found found out about months ago and didn’t care then), and then say that people should eat “Wendy’s, Burger King, What-A-Burger and Carl’s Jr.” instead. Your comment was off topic. You saw an article on Maccas and decided that you would post a slightly irrelevant bit of information and then ignore what the actually article was about. I am all for allowing people to provide their own opinion, but please keep you comments relevant, or at least on a related topic, to the article (at the very least comment on the article itself as well.) If you wish to rant on a tangent, please start a blog, talk to friends, join a forum, or a social activity/message-board site.
“The queers want to grab off the children, something that they can’t produce themselves on purpose, and Ronald McDonald is going to help”
There is so much wrong with this comment it is hard to believe that you are serious (perhaps you are not).
Check this page for other responses to you comment
http://fstdt.com/fundies/comments.aspx?q=47600
@ihateliberals:
The same goes for you, please stay relevant. You comment was not related to the article in anyway.
September 18th, 2008 @7:48 am
Yay for conservative forum trolls!
September 19th, 2008 @9:48 pm
Didn’t know it took 5 teaspoons to hold 6grams of sugar. haha.
September 22nd, 2008 @6:35 am
This is for banning McDonalds happy meal toys not the entire restaurant.
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