For decades, children across the country have looked forward to getting Happy Meals as a delicious treat. But in San Francisco, they will no longer have that option. San Francisco’s board of supervisors voted to ban McDonald’s restaurants from serving Happy Meals in their current form, that is, packaged with toys, on the basis that it unethically markets unhealthy food toward impressionable kids.
Eating too much McDonald’s food is bad for you. This is common knowledge. And the fast food giant’s strategy of marketing toward children is reprehensible. But the government should not immediately jump to completely banning the serving of Happy Meals.
Despite the unhealthiness of McDonald’s food, it is still the right of parents to decide what meals they serve their children. It is wrong to entirely ban a food because a small sector of the population consumes it too often. There are plenty of unhealthy things that are kept on the market, because people deserve the right to be able to choose what they ingest. McDonald’s food is only grossly unhealthy when consumed in excess, and most people have the sense not to do this.
What the government should do is take baby steps toward regulating transparency regarding the health of the food that chains such as McDonald’s serve. It should be mandatory for all fast food chains to provide detailed nutritional information in an easily accessible and visible place within the restaurant. The government should also impose reasonable limits on the amount of things like trans fats that can be included in kids meals. By focusing on educating people about the health risks associated with eating too much fast food, rather than banning it outright, the government can assist people in making up their own minds.
By banning the serving of toys with food and not the food itself, the San Francisco government is shifting the attention from the real problem. Yes, packaging such bad food in a way that is so appealing toward kids is ethically dubious. But it should still be up to the parents to determine how to feed their children.
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