Sad Happy Meals

http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-09-25/news...s-toys-proposal

So how does this type of regulation make people feel? Personally I like Happy Meals. They make me smile and I'm perfectly capable of deciding when and how i want one.

The toy is the best part.

It's not the government's job to tell us what what to eat and what to feed our kids. Food intake is one of the few things children can control. They can simply not eat something. Putting broccoli in a Happy Meal won't make a child eat it, toy or not.

This is just stupid

It's people fault that they are fat and not the product makers. If you only have some excercise every day than you could easily eat at fast food and not become fat.

WHAT!??

Oh. Come. On!!!

This just proves that the content of my post here is absolutely valid.

The problem with giving people the power to choose is sometimes they make the wrong choice.

The government can make all the stupid laws it wants, you can't protect people from themselves.

True. Unfortunately, the government is also full of people who make bad choices.

Really what we need is put the same energy into educating kids about food in school. I can't remember the name of that show where the British chef came here and tried to teach kids to eat differently. But he succeeded. Jamie Oliver maybe?

The funny thing it's the same people who fight to take down a cross memorializing war heroes in the name of civil liberties that want to mandate that we not let succssful enterprises put toys in their product.

Happy Meals are a treat. Just like hot dogs at the baseball game.

We have to learn how to regulate how and when we get that treat, not have Nanny State tell us that we can't because it's bad for us.

I think it was him. He had similar shows in UK. I saw few of them.

It was Jaime Oliver's Food Revolution. That was a good program. I wish there was more of that going on.

The problem is Happy Meals aren't a treat for everyone. Fast food is a multiple meal a week thing for many families. It's in part because of the convenience and it's in part because of the low cost.

Take away the toy and people are still going to eat way too much of it.

Jamie Oliver is a wonderful British chef who has devoted a great deal of time and money to converting the eating habits of children in Britain and he managed to change the way English school lunch programs are funded through the government. That's quite a feat.

He has successfully set up diet improvement initiatives in other countries as well, but met the most resistance -- by far -- in the U.S.

I saw an interview with him in which he said that he actually came close to giving up in the first American town because citizens were so appalled that he would come into their town and tell them what to eat. They really didn't "get" Jamie at all. He is trying to stand up for the health of future generations, if not their parents as well, and he was nearly railroaded out of town for it. They preferred bad food, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and unhealthy children to accepting advice from a lovely, funny, giving, knowledgeable man.

It was Jamie who was truly appalled about what the parents allowed or gave their children to eat.

The obesity rate in children is far too high. That is a fact. But regulating Happy Meals is not going to solve the problem.

I wanted to follow up on this discussion. My husband and I went to dinner the other night at a hibachi place. You know you share the table with others and watch the crazy chef hurl knives around, make volcanoes out of onions...

So two families sat on either side of us. One - a mother and her 8 or so year old son. The second a mother and father with a son about 4 years old. Mother One had a blackberry and a iPhone. She let her son play with iPhone while she talked on blackberry then took the iPhone when she hung up on the first phone and talked on that one. Then she texted on one and talked on the other. Not once did she talk to her son. He sat and ate. I'll give him that he was well behaved. But really?

The second family had both parents engaged in the son, pointing out the chef's antics and talking amongst themselves and with the child.

It was a sad happy meal for my husband and I. I can't even describe how disgusted we both were with Mom One and how nice it was to watch the second family. Meals should be time to teach children, to talk, to socialize, to read menus and to be part of society. How sad that child's life to eat all alone. He ate every bite of his meal and still looked so unfulfilled.