San Francisco banned McDonald’s Happy Meals earlier this year, and New York City is poised to do the same. There is a bill currently in the New York City Council, and I would be surprised if it doesn’t make it to the floor for a vote one of these days.
The food police on both coasts have decreed that restaurants should be prohibited from giving toys to children if the meals don’t meet their strict nutritional guidelines, with McDonald’s, as usual, taking the brunt of the criticism. McDonald’s is the fast-food franchise that lefties love to hate — at least on days when they are not learning that the Golden Arches are the entrance way to half the new jobs in America.
But McDonald’s shouldn’t bear the brunt of the criticism alone. If they are to be banned from providing toys with their food, what about Cracker Jacks? Ounce-for-ounce, Cracker Jacks have more calories than a McDonald’s hamburger. And I dare anyone to find any real nutritional value in a box of the things. Why are they allowed to include a “Toy Surprise Inside?” Why are companies that sell sugary cereals?
Rather than re-think the stridency of their ways, though, food police officers finding agreement with this post would be far more likely to include Cracker jacks in the prohibition than drop the Happy Meal ban itself. I wish they would. It would help bring clarity to the frightful nature of this line of reasoning.
What I would really love to see is some New York City Council Member taking up San Francisco’s bill to ban circumcisions. (An idea likely conceived after a deep bong hit is actually challenging 6,000 years of Judaic custom.) Can you imagine? In New York?
Philosophically, it’s hard to disagree. Except that Cracker Jack doesn’t pretend to be a meal. It’s candy. A Happy Meal clearly pretends to be a meal. Worse still, McDonald’s pretends to be food but it has no nutritional value at all. You can buy a pound of Barilla pasta for about $1 and you can feed an entire family with that pasta. At McDonald’s, that same $1 will get you the single worst hamburger on the face of the planet.
It is said that moralists abhor dog food ads in a world where children go starving. To me, McDonald’s ads are even worse because they steal the money of the poor and give them damaged goods in return. In posts like this you rail against the Nanny State. Turn yourself just ever so slightly (admittedly, to the left) and you will see the reasonable outrage that makes people like me cry at the insatiable beast of the market.