San Francisco Bans Happy Meals

The folks in San Francisco no longer have a choice when it comes to feeding their children at McDonald's restaurants. Kids love Happy Meals because the meal comes with toys. The city's board of supervisors voted to forbid restaurants from giving away toys with meals that have high levels of calories, sugar and fat. All restaurants must provide fruits and vegetables with all meals for children that come with toys.

I interpret this edict as a slap to parent's ability to control their child's diet while eating at McDonald's. If your kid wants a happy meal in order to get the toy, the government demands that your child must eat his veggies in order to get their toy. This assumes that the children WILL eat their veggies and by doing so the epidemic of "childhood obesity" will be solved or at the very least slowed.

This is not a cure for childhood obesity and can easily be defeated by ordering other food items from the menu and toss the happy meal and keep the toy or skip the happy meal altogether. I wonder how many happy meals parents feed to their child in a day.

The real key to reducing adult and childhood obesity is through education and not by government food restriction regulations. If you grew up in the 50's or 60's (we were a lot skinner then) you may remember being taught the food pyramid in home economics classes and going to gym for exercises. Now you can only find the food pyramid on the Internet, or so it seems.

Diet and excise is the real key to keeping your weight under control. I would rather see the government educate than regulate. At present the government can't force us to eat what they mandate. But, they can and will control what we eat by regulating the food industry. So don't be surprise if your tasty snack food is no longer permitted in stores and restaurants.

I am hopeful that some one in the government will take on a study to determine why we were skinny kids in the 50's and 60's as compared to today. I am sure that the results will indicate that we were much more physically active back then. You can view the USDA Food Pyramid here