It is really interesting how happy meals from McDonald are one of the good memories for my younger 4teen and me in the same direction. Even today that he is a freshman in college, we occasionally meet at a Mickey D over a happy meal and ice-cream, which is my calcium intake, to disagree some more and yell at each other for how he should live his life and that how I am wrong in every move that I make. Some things like Mickey D don’t change! Or…
He is home for thanksgiving and last week we grabbed a happy meal while I picked him up from the train station and I was determined to reprimand him for something, when something else came up. The happy meal impressed us on many levels; we were both impressed by the fact that the portions were labeled with nutritional values for each item, from fries to chicken nugget were clearly indicated, we also found the portions were a bit smaller and we could not figure out if it was because of the economy or simply a health stand, and when we got to the toy and we saw the nerf gun, we both started looking quizzically at each other. Why on earth would McDonald put a nerf gun in a happy meal? I immediately questioned the reasoning behind promoting gun, and the miracle of miracles happened and the 4teen happened to agree with me! After so many years of fighting vehemently over buying toy guns, he was agreeing with me. Ok there is a GOD after all, but that is not the point right now.
The point is that we were both confused by the fact that MacDonald doesn’t want people to die from health reasons due to unhealthy eating habits and obesity, therefore, they label all the ingredients of the foods that they serve very adequately. But with that being said, they do not mind people dying due to improper gun control and promoting gun use in our youth. In essence, they are keeping the balance, they try to save lives with healthy eating habits, but they promote death due to violence and gun use.
What are they thinking? Or better yet. Are they thinking at all? Do they need some government body to monitor their common sense as well? I don’t know who decides on these toys, but maybe a parent panel should be in charge of that.
The way I see it, the bottom line of everything is $$. I wonder if MacDonald would have labeled it’s food if their revenues did not go down, or if the trend was not eating healthier? I wonder what happened to traditional toys like puzzles, balls and figurines. I also wonder if the phrase of socially responsible companies in business text books means anything to any corporation any more.
But 4T and 4teen did bond and agree on this issue, and that is a rarity. Then why am I still complaining about issues of the society!
