It would be a bit depressing if there are children who receive a large fraction of their nutrition from restaurants.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s the toys that make kids want to eat at McDonald’s. I think it’s the french fries.

I know children who receive a large fraction of their nutrition from restaurants. Or at least I would consider it a significant fraction, as their families eat out (or order in) 3-4 times a week. None of these kids is fat or seems unhealthy, which tells me that it’s all probably none of my business.

When my kids want toys they demand McDonalds. When they want to eat they demand In-N-Out…

The only reason my kids wanted to eat at McDonalds was for the toys, which is why we stopped going there. I couldn’t get them to eat the chicken nuggets once we bought them because they were more interested in the toys.

I don’t really care either way, but how is this different than banning the sale of alcohol, marijuana or porn on a community? They’re doing what they think is best for the people they represent. If people disagree and want those damn Happy Meal toys, they’ll vote these idiots out next election. Then the kids will be happy because they’ll have their toys and the parents will be happy because their kids will be quiet while they eat fries and play with their Star Wars toys.

Silverain, you can get the exact same food outside of a Happy Meal that you can get in a Happy Meal. Chicken nuggets or a hamburger and a small fry.

When you hear about something like this isn’t it ironically appropriate that the name of our president rhymes with Yo Mama?

You lost me too Ron

Ron, this has nothing to do with Obama. It is a measure voted into law by the city of San Francisco.

The law prohibits restaurants from offering a free toy with meals that contain more than set levels of calories, sugar and fat, and also requires restaurants to provide fruits and vegetables with all meals that come with toys.

In other words, San Francisco is saying to all restaurants (not just MacDonalds) that if you’re going to put a toy in a meal in order to make it appeal to kids, you need to make the meal somewhat healthy, or you’re in violation of the law.

It’s not a ban on happy meals per se, it’s just saying that any meal marketed to kids needs to meet certain standards of nutritional value. MacDonald’s can still serve happy meals, they just need to change them to meet this standard (which is not all that high, IMO).

It’s not really censorship, because censorship is usually defined as government restriction on speech. This is a nutritional law, like standards for breakfast cereals or other foods or products marketed pimarily to kids.

The people of San Francisco voted their Board of Supervisors into office, and this law was passed by a veto-proof margin. Hard to argue that it’s not the will of the people of that city.

SF has so few children that it hardly matters anyway. SF has more dogs then kids per National Geographic magazine but I digress. But I vote its crazy. Peoples republic like crazy.

Sir,

Step away from that happy meal.

12. Ron – ok now I understand. But as McQ states this has nothing to do with Obama

13. MCQ – But they are targeting McDonald’s in this case. It is strange to go after this when there are likely many other things they could target – why not prohibit sale in grocery stores of anything with trans fat, or too many calories?

16. Jon W. – I guess they could make the toys edible out of some vegetable then everyone is happy!

17. bbell – now that was funny

jjohnson—Smalls are bigger than kid size, if I remember correctly. I hardly ever eat at low-end fast food places, so I could be wrong.

MCQ’s explanation makes so much more sense than banning Happy Meals. Not such a bad idea, that way.

#9. Comment withdrawn. Clearly I’m not as clever as I think I am.

Recently in NYC there was talk about taxing soda.

MCQ,

How do you feel about Utah’s formerly crazy alchohol laws? I mean all the state as trying to do was protect the people and make sure the revenue for booze came thru state stores.

I am in favor of increased consumer food choices. SF is acting crazy. But that is their perogative. My kids like happy meals and guess what? They are skinny!!!

“How do you feel about Utah’s formerly crazy alchohol laws? I mean all the state as trying to do was protect the people and make sure the revenue for booze came thru state stores.”

Formerly? My co-workers still complain about buying alcohol here. Has something changed recently?

Something has changed recently. No more private club requirements. You can buy alcohol without paying to join a club, so there are no more fictitious membership cards or “temporary memberships” being sold. That’s a big step forward, but yes, there are still some oddities about Utah liquor laws.

It’s not a close parallel, bbell, because the SF laws are designed to protect kids from targeted marketing that could lead to poor nutrition. There is little alcohol marketing allowed in Utah (all alcohol other than beer is sold only by the state) and certainly none targeting kids.

Remember that this law in SF will have no effect on any restaurant as long as that any meals with a toy in them meet certain minimum nutritional requirements.

I can’t believe Macdonald’s is taking the position that this is a bad law. The right PR move would be to shrug and say “We’ll happily comply because we love kids; they are our best customers.”

I don’t understand how it can be “crazy” to protect kids from predatory marketing on unhealthy products. It’s not about “skinny vs. fat” that’s a straw man. It’s about healthy vs. unhealthy. Why should MacDonald’s be allowed to make billions of dollars while selling unhealthy products to children? Why can’t they comply with these minimal nutritional standards? It’s a no-brainer. Then bbell can take his skinny kids to MacDonald’s and feel a little less like he’s slowly killing them. What’s wrong with that?

Clearly bbell is passionate about his kids being able to eat deep-fried processed chicken parts while playing with their Transformer toy.

And the comic book he is reading is called Chew. And I’m sad that I’m probably the only one nerdy enough to know why.

MCQ (#14): There’s a difference between “promoting the general welfare” vs. “imposing the general welfare”. The Tea Party movement was provoked in part by an endless array of intrusive, invasive, and oppressive measures by government at all levels. San Francisco’s measure takes the cake; the nutritional content of a person’s diet is none of government’s business.

MCQ, how many five-year-olds are driving themselves to MCD? So is the law protecting five-year-olds from MCD or their parents? I think you know the correct answer and do we really want govt passing laws telling us how to raise our kids? If so, where do you want to draw the line.

JA, wouldn’t it be better if the treat was a little healthier? That’s all this law is doing, is setting a minimum standard of health for meals being marketed to kids. Why is that bad?

bbell, sorry, I thought I was being funny too. Guess I wasn’t.

PaulM, do you think every nutritional law is telling you how to raise your kids? Do you think the laws against marketing cigarettes with cartoon characters is telling you how to raise your kids? All this law is doing is telling restaurants (not parents, not kids, restaurants) that if they sell a meal with a toy, they have to meet some very basic nutritional standards. Standards that can be met very easily.

How again is that telling us how to raise our kids? You can still shovel any crap you want down your kids throats, this just tells restaurants that they can’t market crap to kids quite as easily.

MCQ:

Again, how many five-year-olds are driving to MCD and ordering up a Happy Meal? Kids under the age of ten have no independent volition of their own. They can’t make a purchase without the assistance of an adult. You can assert that the law is only regulating restaurants but the de facto effect is restriction and limitation of parental choices of what to feed their children. When I take my kids to MCD I’m there for only one reason– to feed my kids junk food and get them a cheap toy I can throw away in a week. If my local municipality passed this law I’d either end up spending more than I otherwise would (in addition to the now less appealing Happy Meal I’d have to buy additional items to get both the toy and the food I came to eat) or I would stop coming all together (I can get carot sticks and a cheap toy at WMT).

I have become a connisseur, however you spell it, of fast food–my job is close to “burger alley.” A lot of those places have dollar menus and food in a hurry. I like Burger King’s food the best, which came as a surprise to me. Maybe it’s the Burger King here. I also like Arby’s french dip sandwiches and Kentucky Fried Chicken wings meals. McDonald’s comes in 4th although I like their ice cream. San Francisco is crazy.

I have to agree with bbell sentiment in #30. Does the City of SF have no other pressing issues that they need to start regulating children’s occasional fast food choices?

Also, if Sf want to create itself into the ultimate progressive fantasy-land they have every right. But I think the rest of us have a certain responsibility to deride them for their idiocy and the hypocrisy inherent in their BOurgeois BOhemian lifestyles.

While i don’t think that the law is a horrible idea, I do think it seems like a bit of a waste of tax-payer’s money…

jjohnsen – don’t be too sure, we are talking politicians here…

jjohnson,

You’re missing the point. Do we really elect public officials for them to turn around and dictate our dietary choices?

The problem with this knee-jerk nanny-state progressives is that they have no exit strategy. Do you really think that once they have passed the Happy Meal law that the city fathers will then be content to take the rest of the year off?

We all know that living the liberal lifestyle takes real commitment and sacrifice, it just isn’t fair that anyone could have the choice to opt-out and be a drag on the whole system. Socialized medicine will never be economically feasible as long as it has to support the lifestyle choices of the couch potatoes that are too stupid to choose a caprese salad with free-range buffalo mozzarella over a damn cheeseburger.

Once the whole city has been enlightened about the dangers of my-little-pony-Happy-Meal-toys as the gateway drug to becoming little corprobots, what will a Prius driving, locavore, no-h8 progressive have left to feel smug about? Will they really rest on their fare-trade, organically-grown-in-the-occupied-territories, laurels? The fact remains that we have these sorts of social-engineering, misplaced-guilt-alleviating, pipe-dream schemes turn into catastrophic explosions of unintended consequences (housing projects anyone) to know that banning Happy Meals is more about the people doing the banning than it is about some four-year-old eating chicken nuggets. Most of us yokels in the fly-over country aren’t so hopped up on refined sugar or hypnotized by The Jersey Shore reruns that we can see that.

P.S. Did you see the article about Michael Bloomberg’s public service campaign about canned soup?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1328239/New-Yorks-Mayor-Michael-Bloomberg-soup-thats-high-salt.html

Who eats canned soup, do they still sell things like that at Wal-demort? The meat is hormonally grown on slash-and-burned rain forests in Brazil, the carrots are genetically modified and the MSG is refined from the organs harvested from Chinese fulon gong practitioners. The only soup you’ll ever catch me eating is the vegan lentil and whole wheat couscous from the salad bar at Trader Joes. I used to like the Whole Foods Kale and ToFurkey noodle, but then the fascist John Mackey wrote that article in the Wall Street(s will run with the blood of the innocents) Journal.

With my kids, it is absolutely the toy. When given the choice between a food/candy treat and a cheap-piece-of-plastic-garbage toy, their choice is the toy every time. Hence, McDonald’s is their favorite restaurant. Personally, I hate the food there, though, so I only take them there maybe once or twice a year (only if I have some sort of emergency errand and I need them to come along without complaining).

I’m getting hungry for a bk burger and fries as we speak.

jjohnsen – just making a joke about the inability of politicians to focus on more than one thing at a time besides talking out of both sides of their mouth :)

“Progressivism at it heart is about developing feeling of superiority and holding ones self up as more enlightened, more empathetic and generally exceptional to the general population.”

Somebody has been paying attention to Professor Beck.

My biggest complaint about this law is that it is, at its core, more symbolic than anything. If they were serious about children’s health in the city limits, there are positive things they could do. The clearest example to me would be to impose nutritional requirements on food allowed in schools. They could require local-grown vegetables, free-range meat and poultry, restrictions on trans-fats, or anything else that directly affects the children over whom they have responsibility. Rather than do anythiing meaningful, the bravely take on McDonalds.

As a liberal member of the bloggernacle, I dare you to find a single post on and of the numerous sites that I comment where I have said Conservative Mormons just aren’t smart enough to get it.

Mac isn’t right about that at all.

Conservatives were, and are, always being paranoid. It’s one of their most enduring qualities.

Once again, this law does not control the foods peopls can buy. It only controls the nutritional content of meals sold with a toy.

I never imagined people being against even a small or symbolic attempt to give children better nutrition.

Oh, that’s right. The law only controls what food people can buy in conjunction with other food/goods.

I guess that’s all right, then.

Right on, queuno.

A timely article from Victor Davis Hansen …

California’s Assorted Rocks and Hard Places

“a particular class, largely coastal, professional, and liberal, believes utopia is nearly here, if we just impose more regulation, higher taxes on businesses, and more environmental legislation. They have not a clue how others pump oil or gas, grow food, and produce lumber, only that they like driving, like eating, and like nice houses, but are not particularly interested in the grubby Neanderthals who allow that to happen.”

Devyn,

For some reason your comment reminded me of another article that I had read a while back …

The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.

“Despite its good intentions, San Francisco is not leading the country in gay marriage. Despite its good intentions, it is not stopping wars. Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, its homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s. Despite its spending more money per capita, period, than almost any city in the nation, San Francisco has poorly managed, budget-busting capital projects, overlapping social programs no one is certain are working, and a transportation system where the only thing running ahead of schedule is the size of its deficit.

It’s time to face facts: San Francisco is spectacularly mismanaged and arguably the worst-run big city in America. This year’s city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents. Yet despite that stratospheric amount, San Francisco can’t point to progress on many of the social issues it spends liberally to tackle — and no one is made to answer when the city comes up short.”

Including this classic line “… millions of taxpayer dollars are wasted on good ideas that fail for stupid reasons, and stupid ideas that fail for good reasons, and hardly anyone is taken to task.”

Still love to visit though

enjoyed reading this.. though the ways were very simply put I guess, there is no one formula for success…