What McDonald’s has done is teach kids to associate its less-than-ideal meals with fun, which is what matters to them more than the quality of the chicken or beef. That’s why McDonald’s tinkers with its food offerings, but not with the toys. When San Francisco banned toy giveaways with meals that didn’t meet certain nutritional requirements, McDonald’s simply sold the toys for 10 cents to anyone who bought a Happy Meal. That toy is a canny way to secure lifetime customers.
We called 100 nutritionists all over America. And the results were not on track with the vast majority McDonald's talked about. Only two out of the 100 said you should eat fast food two times a week or more. Twenty-eight said once a week to once or twice a month. And 45 said you should never eat it.
While Happy Meals account for less than 10 percent of all McDonald’s sales, the signature box and its contents — first introduced in 1979 — have become a favorite target in recent years. Lawmakers and consumers have rallied around breaking that childhood link between toys and fast food, with the efforts increasing as Michelle Obama and national public health officials point to the estimated 17 percent rate of obesity among the nation’s youths.