Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I remember growing up and being really happy to sometimes get a toy from my fast food meal. I really miss those Mario-themed toys from McDonald's! So I can tell from personal experience that the toys did made me want to go. And we'd go once in a while.

To state that it is the parents' responsibility to choose where to eat is too obvious considering the SE audience. There are families out there that just don't have the time/privilege/knowledge/understanding to fend for themselves. I'd like to draw a comparison with the recent credit crunch where creditors were lending money to people who normally shouldn't be able to get one. Some things may be common sense to some, but not to others.

kids will eat what their parents put in front of them. I imagine getting rid of the toys isn't going to stop parents from going to get fast food and plopping their kid down. At least the toy gets them active and playing after the meal - or even better, the play area. this isn't a problem for the government, it's a problem for parents.

It's not the toys the encourage the kids to eat the meals...it's the parents who keep taking their kids to McDonald's and then wonder why their kids are fat. Cook at home, people!

Yes, the parents are the ones in charge, but this endless marketing towards kids, (e.g. placing the sugary cereals on the bottom of the aisles), makes it more difficult for parents to make good choices for their children. Especially parents with busy workloads. I'm really surprised by how many people are supporting the toys in this comment list.

Having previously worked for a marketing company that designed Happy Meal toys for McDonalds, I can tell you that the toys weren't only designed to appeal to kids...they were also designed to appeal to adults with the "collector" mentality. Those adults may or may not have had children.

I can also say that it was part of my job to go to other restaurants, like Burger King, to procure sets of toys they were offering so we could study the competition. Sometimes the restaurants would sell the toys to me without the meal but other times there were burgers aplenty around the office. We threw lots of them away.

But back to the kids - I think the toys train them to be consumers but not necessarily of the accompanying fast food. I've seen too many uneaten Happy Meals. Commercials for any type of toy train kids to be consumers.

1) Absolutely, my kids have a preference for certain places based on their toy offerings.

2) Funny, I'm still the one with the car keys, so I decide where we're going and the kids deal with it.

There's no cure for these problems like simply having some backbone as a parent.

what does the data say?

my cousins were always nuts about those toys-i know people who even collect them. weird. i was going to mention what dabiscuits brought up-the whole joe camel cigarette child appeal. just like those companies try to get new customers young so does mcd's. it's their way to lure kids in and lock them down to be lifelong customers. resist, i say! cigarettes are more healthy than fast food anyway. lol. i think we should just ban fast food altogether.

I got to see this (for free!) in an advance screening ... The film is a bit of a re-hash of "Omnivore's Dilemma" and "Fast Food Nation" ('Omnivore' author Micheal Pollan is interviewed in the film, as was Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farms, who was interviewed in Pollan's book). I would say that this film is the equivalent of "An Inconvenient Truth" for food production (The production company behind this film actually produced "AIT" as well). The film defenitely aspires to the dramatic, especially during the opening title page, with businessmen with briefcases walking through a blackened field towards factory machines (evil., evil!)

Still, the film does provide many eye-opening scenes that are dramatic... huge cattle farms .... images of dead and/or diseased cows and chickens. There ARE some scenes of inside the slaughtering houses in this film (but thankfully, not too many scenes, and the film does prepare you before showing anything too gruesome). There is an un-intended (or is it?) effect of the scenes inside the slaughter-houses: The film is rated PG, meaning it is acceptable for young viewers, even though some of these images are disturbing. But think - these images are from our food production model. Shouldn't our food production methods be able to be seen by anyone? Is meat processing something that has to be rated R? This relates back to one of the film's primary themes: we would all change our eating habits if we really understood the source and production of our food.

I wouldn't say the film is necessarily a "hatchet job" ... it squarely points the finger at large agra-businesses and government agencies, but that's because they are an easy target: They DO a lot of the bad stuff that the film claims they do, and they try very hard to keep information about their business below the public radar.

Overall, I though the film was very good and eye-opening ... It has made me and my wife think about our food purchases when we go grocery shopping, so this last week instead of buying our groceries at our local "bargain warehouse" grocery store (WinCo ... if you are from the NW, you know WinCo...), we tried getting our groceries from the local farmer's market and Whole Foods. It was more expensive, but when it comes to our food and our health, we both decided that this was important. The film also states at the end of the film some statistics on how you can change the environment and food production model, including such ideas as "buying organic", "buy local", "buy in-season only produce", etc. The tough part is that many people simply do not have the funds to purchase organic or local foods (the film interviews a family of four on food stamps, who finds it cheaper to feed their family a dinner from the dollar menu at McDonald's than it is to buy just a few vegetables). They ARE more expensive ... part of the reason is our skewed farming methods, and the laws that protect and favor industrial food production. But like the film suggests, if we, as a public, change our eating and buying habits, businesses will have to follow suit if they want to keep our business.

I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars.

I think they're harmless - as long as the parents are setting the right boundaries around appropriate food choices. You can't link a McNugget to "acceptable food choice" if your parent refuses to give in to your whining to eat there. My parents certainly were able to say "no" very effectively and that was the end of it.

@mrbadideasdotcom: My parents made the decision against fast food for me and my brothers. Of course this doesn't prove that they weren't delusional.

Luckily, there were always relatives and friends' parents that could be cajoled into providing that sweet mcdonald's manna.

It is definitely a documentary worth seeing, yet I can't seem to understand why in NYC, it is only shown at a small theatre that doesn't even accept credit cards or online orders.

No, food doesn't make you diabetic, poor food choices and excessive consumption make you diabetic. Urban life makes this utopian view of free range, organic, and local an impossibility. Where can you get enough locally grown food to feed New york cities entire population? Think of the new flu virus, a blend of human, avian and human flu viruses, only possible when animals and people mingle freely. Skip coffee, tea and spices, none of those are local.