Coffee Break with Liz and Kate » Headline, Liz's Rants » Liz’s rant: The Nanny Meal

Liz’s rant: The Nanny Meal

May 2nd, 2010 | 1 Comment

Sometimes I feel sorry for ol’ Ronald McDonald. In the past year, PETA has screamed mc-cruelty to chickens, making their own version of Happy Meal boxes, featuring Ronald wielding a large and bloody knife. Then came the calls for the clown to retire, with some labeling him the modern-day Joe Camel. “This clown is no friend to our children or their health,” said Deborah Lapidus of Corporate Accountability International, a group that sponsored nationwide protests outside McDonald’s.

And now this, from Santa Clara County in California, where an ordinance has passed banning toys in Happy Meals. That’s right, no toys in the kids’ meals – at McDonald’s or any other fast food restaurant in the county. Those in non-compliance face a $1,000 fine.

While the people at PETA have a slightly differing agenda – although I’m sure they’d relish if the golden arches collapsed – the bid to rid the world of the ever-wicked Ronald and his evil box of toys can be summed up quite easily: someone else wants to tell you what is acceptable to eat. They, being Corporate Accountability International or the board of supervisors of a county in California, believe that they know what’s better for your children than you do.

They believe that the nation’s obesity can be traced to a clown and his toys. So instead of choosing not to eat there, they’ve decided to take a more sweeping approach: they don’t want you eating there either. To achieve this end, laws such as this stand to soon total greater numbers than the amount of calories in a super-sized Big Mac meal.

Here’s the way the nanny-staters operate. Find a problem (obesity), identify the victims (kids – after all, everything they do is purportedly “for the children”), search and destroy the villain (a clown or a toy), control the issue (people). While some may initially see this as a rainbows-and-flowers-and-picket-fences fix, it changes the role of the parent and the child, slowly eroding parental control and replacing it with governmental control.

I’m insulted. I suspect you are, too.

Because most Americans are smarter than this. Our kids don’t eat Happy Meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And every now and then, there’s nothing wrong with a burger and fries, much less the token toy. Moreover, we realize that a ban on kids’ meal toys will lead to a ban on donut shops and candy makers and cereal producers and potato chips. (A salt ban is already on the table in New York.) Once a law passes, the nanny staters will tell you they need to pass more. “We thought this would be enough to stop childhood obesity,” they’ll say, “but it’s not.”

Idiots.

Even if my kids ate three Happy Meals a week, it’s no one else’s business, quite frankly. For anyone who’s offended by Ronald McDonald and his toys, here’s a quick suggestion: don’t eat at McDonald’s. And leave the rest of us alone to enjoy our Happy Meals before they become Nanny Meals.