RELEASE: SF healthy meal law takes effect, McDonald’s takes low road

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. – Today, San Francisco’s groundbreaking Healthy Meals Incentive Ordinance takes effect. The law sets basic nutritional standards for kids’ meals that are accompanied by toy giveaways. Its passage last November garnered international media attention, helping spur a cascade of developments in curbing junk food marketing to kids.

 

Yet instead of removing toys or improving the healthfulness of kids’ meals now loaded with fat, salt, sugar and calories, the burger giant will now sell the toys “separately” for an additional 10 cents. The corporation’s cynical move speaks to the marketing power of toys in hooking kids on junk food. A Consumers International report finds that toys are a primary reason kids crave Happy Meals (moreso than the taste of the food).

 

"This law invited McDonald's to use toy giveaways to steer kids toward healthier meals. Instead, McDonald's has gone to great lengths to maintain the status quo,” said Samantha Graff, senior staff attorney at Public Health Law & Policy. “McDonald's gets points for being clever, but given that we're in the midst of an unprecedented obesity crisis in America, it's too bad the chain put its cleverness to work against the interest of our children's health."

 

Still advocates see McDonald’s (and now Burger King’s) cynical approach to the policy as but a setback for a policy that had a tremendous impact prior even to its taking effect.

 

“This law is an important achievement not only for the health of San Francisco’s children, but for children nationwide,” said San Francisco City Supervisor Eric Mar, the sponsor of the measure. “We are ensuring parents and children have real choice when they eat out – especially in communities saturated with McDonald’s-style junk food. It’s common sense for a healthier America that I’d encourage the food industry to act on immediately.”

 

Shortly after the policy’s passage, the Los Angeles City Council declared a moratorium on new fast food establishments in South Los Angeles, an area where fast food predominates and diet-related disease is disproportionately high.

 

New York City introduced a measure similar to San Francisco’s, proposing nutritional standards for kid’s meals served with toys. Other local and state governments have since tested the waters or are currently considering advancing related polices.

 

Nationally, a federal interagency working group also proposed new recommendations for marketing junk food to kids after 30 years of industry intimidation to remain on the sidelines.

 

Perhaps most telling of the San Francisco law’s impact was the industry response.

 

Jack in the Box, the country’s fifth largest hamburger chain, announced it was discontinuing toy giveaways at its 2,200 stores nationwide. KFC Australia not only dropped the toys but offered, “we think the idea of toys being given away with meals has had its day…we hope this decision today will support parents in making dietary decisions on behalf of their children which aren't influenced in any way by pressure to choose the meal that has a toy."

 

“The San Francisco Healthy Meals initiative and the public support for it put the fast food industry on notice,” said Sara Deon, director of Corporate Accountability International’s Value [the] Meal campaign. “Some corporations responded in good faith. Others responded with half measures and PR. Still others like McDonald’s dug in their heels, but in so doing are casting themselves as a deep-fried-dinosaur. The time is coming for outmoded practices like marketing junk food to kids to go extinct.”

 

Corporate Accountability International partnered with a broad coalition of health professionals, local parents, and small businesses to secure passage of the Healthy Meals Incentive Ordinance despite the dedicated opposition of McDonald’s and its trade association.

 

When the ordinance was being voted upon last year, the burger giant enlisted top-dollar lobbyists, public relations firms and lawyers to oppose the law. Failing to overcome grassroots support, McDonald’s executives threatened to sue the city upon the measure’s implementation.  Its trade association even went so far as to work under the radar to persuade state lawmakers in Florida and Arizona to pass a state law preventing local governments from enacting similar measures.

And McDonald’s latest attempt to protect its marketing practices by skirting the ordinance is yet further evidence of how out-of-touch the corporation’s actions are with the “family-friendly” image it hopes to project.

 

The threats, PR and backroom deals haveonly solidified the resolve of health advocates. In May, Corporate Accountability International launched a partnership with a still-growing network of some of the country’s leading cardiologists, children’s psychologists, pediatricians and other health professionals to call on McDonald’s directly to cut the junk food promotions to kids.  In July, the American Academy of Pediatrics took a further step, based on a growing body of science, suggesting a total ban on junk food marketing.

 

"Food is medicine. Which means bad food is bad medicine,” said Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco. “Kids cannot choose to refrain from taking bad medicine when prescribed. Coercing children to consume food with questionable nutritive value is not all that different from medical malpractice. And the results of this bad medicine, in terms of childhood obesity, are there for all to see. I applaud San Francisco's fortitude in taking steps to spare the health of a generation.”

 

As pressure grew on McDonald’s and other chains,  a host of McDonald’s competitors voluntarily committed to reduce the amount of fat, salt, sugar, and calories in kids’ meals over the next decade. Never mind the commitments were unenforceable, lax and self-imposed, McDonald’s refused to join the club.

 

Instead the burger giant took its own small step to avoid further regulation, adding apple slices to all Happy Meals and reducing the portion size of its kids’ fries. The action was a sure sign McDonald’s was responding to a public increasingly disenchanted with its predatory marketing. The temporary positive PR belies the failure of these “new and improved” meals to meet San Francisco’s proposed nutritional recommendations for kids’ meals. Most concerning, McDonald’s actions has made no move to reduce its annual $400 million plus global budget for marketing its exceedingly unhealthy brand to children.

 

For San Francisco parents like Caroline Grannan, McDonald’s calculations only reinforce the bad taste the corporation left in the mouths of city residents last year.

 

"McDonald’s and its spin doctors couldn’t have been more condescending to parents here,” said Caroline Grannan, mother of two. “First they told us they had the right to promote whatever they want at any expense to our children. Then they told us that if our children got sick as a result, it was wholly our fault. San Francisco’s new law has challenged the industry’s blame-shifting in a profound way – calling an abusive industry to account for its devastating role in today’s health crisis."

 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, right now, one in three children are at risk for developing type-2 diabetes in their lifetime as a result of diets high in McDonald’s-style junk food. This generation may be the first in U.S. history to live shorter lives than their parents.