Fast-food marketing to kids unhealthy

I was pleased to see your coverage of McDonald’s recent changes to its Happy Meals. While adding fruits and veggies to Happy Meals is a good step, McDonald’s continues to avoid addressing the primary way in which the corporation contributes to the staggering rates of diet-related disease: the hundreds of millions it spends aggressively marketing its brand to kids. Not-so-healthy “healthier” items like apple dippers in a sugary dipping sauce are used to get more people in the door to consume those unhealthy items that remain the chain’s bread and butter: soda, burgers and fries.

The healthier Happy Meal remains high in salt, sugar and fat and, toy included, continues to function as a vehicle for hooking kids on the McDonald’s brand at a young age. It is not enough for McDonald’s to simply reduce the degree to which it is contributing to today’s epidemic of diet-related disease. Nor does it deserve praise for cleaning-up but a part of the terrible mess it continues to create.

Its time the burger giant took the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Federal Trade Commission, and health professionals and parents who are calling on them to stop marketing junk food and its unhealthy brand to children.

Yasiu Kruszynski

Chicago