14 DAY TRIAL // McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson pretty much got owned by a 9-year-old girl at a recent Mickey D’s shareholders meeting, when he tried to argue with her that they’re not selling junk food. Check out their exchange in the video below.
A transcript of the entire meeting is available here.
Hannah Robertson is only 9 and she’s the daughter of a health and nutrition blogger. Her question had more to do with the marketing of McDonald’s products targeting kids and how it wasn’t “fair” for them to use cartoons and toys to lure the children towards an unhealthy lifestyle.
As we also noted on a previous occasions, this is a very frequent complaint lodged against the fast food chain.
Hannah thinks so too.
“I don't think it is fair when big companies try to talk kids into eating foods, that isn't good for them by using toys and cartoons characters. If parents haven’t taught their kids about healthy eating then the kids probably believe that junk food is good for them because it might taste good, then they are able to keep plugging their hands to give them massive, isn't it better that so many kids of my age and younger that are getting really sick with disease like diabetes and obesity, that is really sad,” she told Thompson.
“Mr. Thompson, don't you want to kids to be healthy so they can live a long and happy life?,” she asked.
The CEO, clearly dedicated to the new McDonald’s policy of disassociating themselves from the term “junk food,” started off by saying that, “First off, we don’t sell junk food, Hannah.”
He continued to say that they’re still working on making kids menus healthier by the inclusion of more fruits and veggies, and that his own kids had grown up on McDonald’s food.
“We serve a lot of foods and veggies at McDonald’s and are trying to sell even more with the apples that we introduced into the Happy Meal, we serve different foods and different variety, I was telling you a little bit earlier about things we would like to introduce even more, there is an affinity for them like kiwi on a stick and pineapples and we serve salads and we serve those for dollar on a Dollar Menu and they are very affordable,” Thompson said.
“And so there's a lot of things that we've done, our chicken nugget happy meals, fat free milk, both we also just changed the chocolate factory milk we are making a lot of changes at McDonald’s and we will continue to. I think it’s really great that you want to continue eating more fruits and more vegetables. I honestly hope even more kids do,” he added.
