Is McDonald’s Selling What It Advertises to Kids?

by Cara Wilking, J.D.

Since 2008, national advertising for McDonald\’s Happy Meals has not depicted soda as per a self-regulatory pledge made to the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI). In a recent pledge with the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, McDonald\’s stated that it will not display soda company logos in the children’s section of its restaurant menu boards or otherwise promote or feature soda, but soda will remain on the children’s menu. This seems to be a huge public admission that McDonald\’s has no plans to actually take soda off of its children’s menu. Almost five years after McDonald\’s began implementation of its CFBAI pledge its in-store children\’s menu offerings still do not match the Happy Meal combinations it advertises to the public.

In July of 2011, I wrote about the fact that McDonald’s CFBAI pledge had not translated into its healthier options becoming its most popular or commonly sold options (a fact later confirmed by McDonald’s). At that time, meal combinations with french fries and a 12 oz. soda were the most popular Happy Meal combinations. Two years later, soda is still on the children’s menu. In order to truly improve the nutritional profile of the meals it actually sells, McDonald’s needs to do the same thing with beverages that it did with its french fries. Change the default. When a parent orders a Happy Meal the clerk should ask, “milk, apple juice or water.” Its CGI pledge does not accomplish that and evinces a potentially huge disconnect between what McDonald\’s advertises and what it is actually selling to children and their parents.