Breaking Down The Fast Food Toy Ban

Ephedra

The quest to regulate nutrition and childhood obesity continues. Officials of Santa Clara county in California made national headlines this week when they voted to ban the inclusion of toys with meals that contain too many calories, fats, sugars or sodium levels.

The ordinance – which faces a final vote in 90 days – makes it illegal to give a free toy with a meal containing over 485 calories, a drink with over 120 calories, or a single food item with over 200 calories.

Clearly the lawmakers have McDonalds and their kiddie-friendly Happy Meals in their sights.

A Happy Meal is a hamburger (or cheeseburger), fries and a soda. Nowadays you can also have a 4-piece McNuggets rather than a hamburger, apple slices with caramel dipping sauce instead of fries, and milk or orange juice instead of a soda.

According to the nutritional information on the McDonalds website, you could simply swap the French fries (250 calories) for the apple slices with caramel (105 calories) and you would come in just under the 485 calorie limit (the hamburger is 250 calories and the small Coca Cola is 110 calories for a total of 465 calories).

So what you are effectively doing is putting a ban on French fries – which doesn’t really sound too restrictive. This may not be something that we want as a free country but from the standpoint of a nutritionist, French fries are some of the worst foods people can eat: they are super high in calories, they don’t fill you up, and they are addictive.  When people eat French fries they put lots of fat into their bodies without ever feeling full.

It would be interesting to see if you could test which dinner most children would choose: a Happy Meal with Apple Dippers, no French fries and a toy or a Happy Meal without a toy but with French fries.

I think we know the answer. The desire for French fries is above all. So if we want our kids to lose weight and we can’t tell them no, maybe we need the government to do it for us.

At the end of the day, every parent of an obese child and every adult who wants to lose weight needs a healthy weight loss plan.

Lipodrene