Child obesity problem lies with parent

A cheeseburger Happy Meal with chocolate milk has 700 calories. A Happy meal with chicken McNuggets and a small Sprite has 520 calories. This is according to McDonalds.com, but for some reason they forgot to list the unhealthiest product in a kid’s meal.The tiny plastic toy.

At least that’s what the San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently decided on. It’s always comforting to see that there are still officials out there who lack any faith in the American public and know it’s their responsibility to stop the masses from drowning in their own bath tubs.

The concept here is that these five cent novelties are luring children into forcing their parents to buy them high calorie fast food meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Has parenting really gone that out of style?

It’s silly to ban Happy Meal toys and expect that those who are giving their offspring free reign in deciding what constitutes as a nutritious meal to all of a sudden stop. The issue isn’t the toy. It’s the parents.

Investing in awareness campaigns, commercials or radio spots would have made a million times more sense than this. What is going to cause the parent to break this bad habit. Was the allure of a toy that most kids lose in the car half-way home really the cause of the problem?

It’s more likely that parents, exhausted from a hard day’s work, don’t feel up to cooking for little Timmy or Nancy. The economy is tight, and they don’t have a lot of income to spare, so a quick stop at the drive-through window seems like the most logical answer.

If San Francisco really wanted to put a plug on the child obesity problem, they should have shortened the work week to six hours per day.

  • Mesa Legend Staff

    These are archived stories from Mesa Legend editions before Fall 2018. See article for corresponding author.

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