Stanford has released a study about McDonald’s branding and how the fast food giant’s marketing to children has basically ingested our pre-schoolers, especially those who come from lower income families. Here is the original piece from Stanford.

The gist of the Stanford University School of Medicine study is as follows:  63 kids between the ages of 3 and 5 were given two identical food items, one wrapped in McDonald’s packaging, and one in a plain wrapper, and they were asked which item tasted better.  An overwhelming 60 percent of the kids picked the items in the Golden Arches wrapper, even for foods such as baby carrots!

The correlation with lower income families ingesting large amounts of McDonald’s makes this entire study even sadder, because fast food likely remains a viable option for these families financially when healthier restaurants are not. While many of them may have the means to purchase the same dollar amount in groceries, they may be working multiple jobs making it nearly impossible to cook for the kids, or maybe they aren’t even aware of what it is they are doing to their children’s’ bodies by feeding them bag after bag of French fries. 

A story in the Tucson Citizen last fall asserted that an astounding 40,000 American children now have type 2 diabetes, the type that is associated with adult obesity.  Furthermore, minority children, and more specifically American Indian and Hispanic children, are at greatest risk for childhood diabetes especially when they eat a diet of high-calorie, high-fat foods.

Kids are going to be automatically drawn to brands.  It’s the same reason Michael Jordan sneakers were so popular years ago, and why when I was in middle school, I desperately wanted a pair of Guess Jeans.  But we all need to take ownership of our kids and assuage them from being sucked in by the material giants that make up branding. 

Now, I am not a subscriber to the cult following of "Fast Food Nation" (Houghton Mifflin Co.; January 2001), but personally, I do not eat fast food.

As a child, my brother and I considered it a real treat to eat McDonald’s, Burger King or Hardee’s, and we considered it a treat because we only got it very, very rarely.  I considered it a special occasion type of food, like popcorn at a movie.  And I firmly believe that is why fast food is not a part of my diet now.  Eating habits are ingrained in us in the earlier years of childhood.

So, when I read and hear about kids who are eating McDonald’s once a week or more, I cannot say that I am surprised at the surge of childhood obesity and diabetes.

But I cannot say I blame McDonald’s or the other fast food chains for these problems in their entirety, either.  I blame the parents in large part as well. Fast food should be a treat, or a quick grab and go when you are running short on time, not a regular part of a growing child’s diet, and it is our role, as parents, to ensure that is all it ever is and ever will be.