Don't Toy With Mickey D's ... Or With Mommy

In the food-wars arena, the deceptively childish-looking Happy Meal is a gladiator that no challenger has been able to take down. The Happy Meal Warrior recently outsmarted the bureaucrats in San Francisco and had a lawsuit against it tossed out by a California judge. The so-called Center for Science in the Public Interest was suing McDonald's for using toys to sell fast food to kids, a business practice that many nanny-staters would love to outlaw.

Last year, McDonald's tried to appease its critics by reducing the servings of fries in Happy Meals and adding apple slices, but this concession won't stop the food police's attacks or affect the obesity "epidemic."

CSPI responded to the dismissal of their lawsuit with a statement that included this hypocritical charge: "Using toys, of all things, to lure young children to fast-food meals is not responsible corporate behavior. It's a predatory practice that undermines parents, causes rifts in families, and harms kids' health."

Please. By seeking to limit choices and set themselves up as the ultimate authority on what kids are allowed eat, lobbying groups like the CSPI and government power-trippers undermine parents as part of their M.O. 'Undermining parents' is on the food cops' daily to-do list. In an excellent op-ed titled “Compliant Americans,” conservative columnist Walter Williams writes, “Seeing San Franciscan compliance (to the thwarted Happy Meal ban) may have been the source of inspiration for the North Carolina schoolteacher who took the 5-year-old girl's lunch.” Williams points out that in that infamous lunch-confiscation incident, “whether her lunch was nutritious or not is not the issue. The issue is governmental usurpation of parental authority.”


Outside groups have no business interfering with parents who want to reward their children from time to time with a kid's meal and a small, inexpensive toy. And if they're concerned about causing "rifts in families," CSPI should aim their criticism at government agencies that remove children from their own homes. Of course, when kids  are taken from their homes they won't be able to get Happy Meals, so maybe they're okay with that "predatory practice."