Please watch this video (or, rather, listen to the audio). The following is my response. I’m fine with people eating fruits and even vegetables, either for health reasons or because they genuinely find them delicious. I’m partial to a number of delicious fruits myself.
But I don’t want them from McDonald’s. I certainly don’t want to force them upon other customers.
So, my response to the video:
I only rarely got fast food when I was growing up. A toy or a cartoon character is nice but, even as a preschooler, I wanted to eat their food because it is DELICIOUS.
I’m not angry with the nine-year-old. I’m angry at the mentality of adults who should know better who want to ruin everyone else’s happiness.
I’m so grateful that I had long outgrown Happy Meals before they began putting fruits, vegetables, and other food that my food eats in Happy Meals instead of the delicious food. You can eat fruit and vegetables at home—it is not McDonald’s responsibility to have every food that you might ever want to give to your children. You don’t yell at a hot dog vendor for not serving salads. It’s not McDonald’s job to have every food—just whatever delicious food that we want to eat and that they want to serve us that will make money for them and their stockholders.
My answer probably would have been along the lines of: “Well, it’s the job of our advertising department to attract customers of all ages to eat at McDonald’s. It’s the job of many other parts of this corporation to make sure that everything about your experience when you visit a McDonald’s makes you happy and want to come back again–which means making the food delicious but also providing healthy options. It’s my job to make sure that the different parts of this company work together as well as possible. And it’s the job of the consumers–consumers like your parents–to look at our advertising and everything about us, and decide if McDonald’s is a place where you want to go. We don’t want to trick children–or adults–into visiting, because we want you to be happy with what you find when you get here and want to come back.”
But obviously people would raise hell that that was too complex to say to a child or that that was too blunt of an answer to give in front of cameras because parents are the ones with money to spend and they don’t want to be told that they have responsibilities.
