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A while back, I put up a brief article entitled, “Is It Me, or Are Do-Gooders Overly Annoying People?“. This article was primarily about the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) demanding that McDonalds, USA stop offering toys in their “Happy Meals“. They were attacking McDonalds because they are alleged to be the leaders in fast food advertisement directed at young children. Their sin is pumping as much as $520 million dollars into the economy in the form of advertisement. The CSPI issued a “demand letter” to the President of McDonalds, USA, LLC, demanding the immediate stop to giving toys with meals or face a lawsuit. You can read that letter by clicking on this link: http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/mcdonalds-demand-062210.pdf.

The CSPI sees forcing McDonalds to stop issuing toys as an integral part of fighting what they perceive to be a war on obesity. What the CSPI does not see is that even if they are successful, their tactic will have no effect on children’s fast food diet. The reason it will have little to no effect is that children are not the decision makers – parents are. By the way, did you know that there are groups like Eco Child’s Play and studies that claim that fast food from sources such as McDonalds are actually safer than school lunches prescribed under the National School Lunch Program (NSLP)? A recent example is the numerous cases of school lunch food ingredients found well beyond their expiration dates that were being used by the Boston School Department. This is in addition to other health hazards cited in the article found by clicking on the link highlighted with the words, “Eco Child’s Play”, and going to their “Green Parenting for Non-Toxic, Healthy Homes” website.

If there are parents who feel they are being “forced” to bring their child to McDonalds instead of to a more conventional restaurant like “Longhorn Steakhouse” or “Legal Seafood”, then they really don’t understand the essential duties and responsibilities of being a parent. It is not a child’s job to raise adults to conform to their wishes. It is the job of parents to teach their children life’s essential lessons and beyond to help the child develop into a good citizen, a caring person and a person with enough tools to have a chance of succeeding in achieving whatever pursuit leads them to happiness. Perhaps, if parents tried less to be friends with their children and worked harder at being role models and mentors, children would develop and retain the habits and customs that lead to health, happiness, and success earlier in life.

At any rate, behavior changes cannot be forced by law, mandates, or even social criticism. If behavior could be changed by those means, we wouldn’t have drug, alcohol, tobacco, food, welfare and sex addicts. We wouldn’t have criminals who are repeat offenders. We wouldn’t have to worry that releasing sex offenders might lead to more innocent children or women being sexually abused, tortured or murdered. The truth is that you can’t force people to change what they are, what they do, or who they’ve become until those individuals are willing to look objectively in the proverbial mirror and admit that change must occur. Your disgust, support, humiliation, acceptance and so on will not bring about change. The change needed is change that must, by necessity, come from within.

In an article entitled, “Change because you want to” from the blog, Dr. Hurd.com, clinical psychologist and author Stanton Samenow writes:

“No matter how grim the situation, no threat by an authority or anyone else can compel someone to change against his will. For meaningful and lasting change to occur, the offender eventually must develop motivation within himself to look in ‘the mirror’ and dislike what he sees. External leverage can assist in bringing him to this point, especially if he knows that he could have probation revoked, be subject to relocation to a different and perhaps worse facility, or experience the withdrawal of support by those who have stood by him. As I meet with an offender, I am asking that he do what no one likes to do – come face to face with his shortcomings. Part of my task is to help generate internal motivation, to help the offender become fed up with himself.”

Dr. Hurd writes:

“Nobody, criminal or not, will change against his or her own will. Consider the analogy of smoking. People who successfully quit smoking usually know that they should stop, and even want to. But only at a certain point do they actually follow through. People who quit often tell me, “I just got disgusted and mad with myself. The habit was annoying me, and I decided that was it.” The same applies to any pattern or trait that requires change.

Coming face to face with your shortcomings requires seeing yourself objectively. This can be difficult, but it’s necessary. You owe it to yourself – not anyone else, just yourself – to be the best person you can be. Seeking help and input from reliable others can be effective, but first and foremost, YOU must be your own life coach or therapist.”

[Emphasis added]

The officers of CSPI would do well to read this article before attacking a business that provides a service that people choose to patronize. Children do not drive automobiles, they do not have disposable income to spend on fast food, and they are not the decision makers in most families. Parents need to take control of their children and teach those children that whining is not acceptable behavior by refusing to give them what they want just to shut them up. Teaching is a parental duty. Learning is the duty of every child – that is why school is mandatory in America. Every individual has the right to choose freely and no individual or group has the right to usurp that choice from any individual unless the law is broken. Even then, each person is presumed to be innocent, or acting within their rights, until proven guilty before sanctions can be imposed. The same holds true for corporations – they cannot be sanctioned unless they are breaking the law. Selling hamburgers, cheeseburgers, soda, chocolate milk, French fries or apple fries and salads to anyone who can pay is legal.

As Dr. Hurd concludes:

“People will not change without somehow arriving at the deeply held conviction that change must take place. Think of the smoker who quits because he’s fed up. It’s the same with anything else in life. People don’t change because they have to. They do it because they want to.”

If the accusations made by the NSLP are true, and if you want to change McDonalds sales and promotion behaviors, you must first get their adult patrons to look objectively at what they may be doing to their children and help them to see, deeply, that what they are doing may be inappropriate. McDonalds offers healthier choices, even with their “Happy Meal” options because enough of the market wants healthy options at low prices. Some parents are taking advantage of the healthy alternatives and ordering them for their children; most opt to let the kids decide for themselves. These changes are not occurring because of force, but they are, instead, brought about as the result of a reasoned combination of alternatives, affordability and personal decision making by adults – not by children and not because of the presence or lack thereof of cheap toys.

One last consideration: As the economy remains sluggish and parents are worried about how they can afford to feed their children, the nose of a busybody – good intentions or not – becomes a more available and inviting target when it tries to force unwanted advice upon others. As always, the choice on acting out in this arena remains yours.