In a drive to discourage unhealthy dietary choices, San Francisco today banned “Happy Meals” at McDonald’s restaurants. Instead, all fast-food outlets will now be required to serve “Sad Meals” as a way to make tasty food unappealing to kids.
The new regulation outlaws giving away cheerful plastic toys with each Happy Meal, as well as any similar enticing promotion at other fast-food franchises. In their place, restaurants must now include items which make children feel bad or ashamed.
The vote to replace “Happy Meals” with “Sad Meals” in the city was unanimous, with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voting 9-0 on the legislation, officially entitled the “Eat and DIE! Amendment.”
“It should be the responsibility of the industry to promote healthy choices,” said Supervisor Nan E. Stait, chief sponsor of the legislation. “If we can ensure that kids feel really awful when they eat food they crave, we can slowly wean them off high-fat and high-sodium diets.”
Starting on January 1, 2011, all nationally franchised restaurants doing business in San Francisco will be required to include creepy, insulting and/or humiliating promotional toys with any meal that fails to meet the city’s exacting nutritional guidelines.
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| The “Sinister Clown” wind-up toy |
Restaurants will have several options from which to choose, with various designs unveiled during today’s San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting:
- Circular metallic stickers featuring a frowny-face and the words “I’m a fatso!” or “Lard-butt.” Parents will be required to affix the stickers to their children’s foreheads during meals eaten in public.
- Wind-up toys which speak any of ten different phrases, including “You’re morbidly obese!”, “Sure, keep stuffing your fat little face,” and “You make me sick, you disgusting pig!” Children can choose either the Sinister Clown, Nagging Granny, or Scary Bully designs.
- Miniature flipbooks featuring full-color photos of actual surgical procedures taken during heart bypass operations and liposuction sessions.
- A new line of collectible figurines called Chubbies, with names such as Friendless Fritz, Diabetic Debbie, and Acne Ashly.
“We will roll out additional promotional designs over the upcoming months,” said Reg U. Latory-Ovareech, spokesman for the Board of Supervisors. “The worse we make these kids feel now, the better off they’ll be in the long run.”
LOL!
The thing that cracks me up is that most kids will barely touch their meal and want to play with the damned ‘toy’ instead (on the rare occasion we took our daughter to a McDonald’s and got her a “Happy Meal” she barely touched her burger and fries and wanted to play with the toy instead). If anything, the toy is a great ‘marketing’ strategy and nothing more.
Here’s an idea (I’ll get hell for this, I’m sure lmao):
Why not carve fresh carrots/zuccini/cucumbers into cute/fun/playful shapes and the child can eat the ‘toy’ and it will be good for the child? With all of the money that fast food joints invest into making everything taste the same with ‘flavor techs’, why not use that money to invest in making toys out of automated vegetable and fruit carvings or even dehydrated fruits (remember those granny faces you could carve out of an apple and dry up and eat later?)… I mean, it’s not IMPOSSIBLE to make a few healthy snacks as TOYS! Children LOVE to ‘play’ with their food anyhow. Whatta concept?
hahahahaha
I’m weird. I know, but, I’m not a “Food Nazi”, I do believe there could be better and healthier ways to go about marketing. Why not carve a “Toy Story” character out of a carrot? ;P
…. Why not carve a (“Democrat”) out of a carrot? ….
Perhaps because it’s labor/capital-intensive and requires the handling of raw food?
Sure to be something along those lines and thus either irrelevant and/or really unfathomable to “Democrats” and/or to other morons and/or crypto-fascists.
In the mind of a Fascist, giving people choices always fails.
Why?
Because, the ‘little people’ will always make the ‘bad’ choice (‘bad’ choice being relevant to said latest Fascist “science”).
Remember when “fat” was the “bad guy”? Now it turns out, eating more fat and less carbs is actually beneficial and makes your body run like a well-oiled machine instead of a sluggish cow.
HA!
Double HA! evennnnn
…. In the mind of a fascist, giving people choices always fails ….
I’d take your observations, based in your first-hand experience, as evidence that what you say is true, except that while I’ve seen a lot lately of a fascist with a TelePrompTer, I’ve yet to observe a fascist with anything that might reasonably be called “a mind.”
Are you sure you don’t mean to witness that fascists feel and/or emote that giving people choices always fails? That seems more accurate.
Well, it is San Francisco, the city of amoral weirdos. Wonder what population percentage represents paedophiles – because sadness, shame and low self esteem render a child vulnerable.
I’m sure there are plenty of “kind” perverts hovering about waiting for a chance to “cheer” sad child up.
DIS- FLAMING-GUSTING!
There are children in San Francisco?
No.
There are plenty- They are called Democrats.
Actually, those are babies
There are quite a few children on the City Council, obviously. At least to judge by this temper tantrum.
child abuse is legal now. figures in a place that supports the killing of children and the active support of childless “couples”.
Hey, I know, lets require all the SF fast food joints to serve Trojan condoms with their French fries, ostensibly to protect the children from greasy fingers. Instead of smiley clown dolls, let’s mandate dolls wearing miniature whips and stiletto high heels to go with chicken entrees, like the dominatrix nuggets, um, finger licking good, and it hurts so nice going down. Make them talking dolls,and upgraded “Chatty Cathy” singing “It’s whips and jingles time, it’s whips and jingle time.” Yea, that should do it for the bondage and domination aversion therapy for the future obese: you get it our way at Burger King.
Easy Don. Why take it out on the kids? The Bored of Stupidvisors should sit on vertical cucumbers (unpeeled) and at the end of the day, slice them up for use in their recycled corn salad. Dressing would be intimate lint, all served up by laughing legal illegals. Happy Meal! Mmm, mmm, mmm.
Excuse me, don, that should be!
Please- this is satire, right? Right?
Yes Bohemond, it’s most definitely satire. But I’m betting SF is taking notes and thinking “Hmmm…”
I think Zombie’s satirical point was:
Fascism starts out with supposedly ‘innocuous good intentions’ for the ‘good of all’ and then takes over from there into really bad territory.
I honestly think it would be great to have healthier choices, but, that should be the choice of the consumer first and foremost.
Personally, I think those shit toys made in China probably have so many noxious chemicals in them that I’d prefer them to be removed entirely or MADE IN AMERICA ONLY (whatta concept). Good luck with that!
Uh…yes.
Read a little more closely. Look at the names — Nan E. Stait, Reg U. Latory-Ovareech?
At least it’s half parody. The part about banning Happy Meals is true. I just took it to the next logical step.
don’t give them any ideas.
oh please, let them take this as an idea and implement it literally
Maybe then the voters would finally realise what idiots they’re voting for (ok, fat chance, but a low fat diet of lean pork…).
Snap!
TMI? You make me moist, Zombie!
You are incredibly sexay and incredibly relevant as not just a blogger but a journalist with some real skin in the game…
I don’t care if you’re male/female…you make me HAWT.
You have an open mind coupled with an open heart. I am so smitten with you.
Please, never change and keep doing the crazy fucking shit nobody else will do because they are pussy whimps.
I’m so smitten with you…
Never change. EVER.
You are my hero!
No, it’s not entirely satire. They are banning Happy Meals, or meals with toys. It’s hard to satire San Francisco.
Are the restaurants going to follow such stupid rules? I surely wouldn’t. They clearly have no power to enforce what a restaurant calls their meals or includes or does not include in promotion. Defying this measure is simply free advertising.
Enforcement would be simple. Don’t comply and you loose your business license.
live free or die
Grateful Dead : Uncle John’s Band @ Radio City 10-31-80
Sad Meals are only the beginning. Adults get obese too, you know. The next direct action of the Supes will be the banning of any food vendors who promote dining satiation. That includes, of course, the arrogantly selfish Whole Foods organization. They may choose Half Vast Foods, or Half-Starved, or other slogan welcomed by the lordly Supervisors, but choose they must. The gourmandizing days are now over. Just think of all those starving Chinese who would benefit from vittles not consumed in San Francisco.
Truths prosperity lies in jest.
The tragedy is relevant to anyone that lived in San Francisco Bay area, or California really, during the 60′s and 70′s and experienced the Golden State, It was glorious. I left in 2005 for greener pastures as it was becoming even too absurd to even joke about.
Today it is a cracked mirror’s reflection of itself, after certain individuals chased the Military out; Ron Dellums and Dianne Fienstien, the state began its slow spiral down until today it sits on the edge of a very dangerous cliff.
Dont blame the Supervisors, for they know not how to manage a city. It is the people of San Francisco that allow the nonsense to continue.
I guess if they were serious about losing weight they could include a chocolate desert with the meal made of ex-lax. Or possibly encourage bulimia. This way kids could have their cake and spew it too.
If it were anywhere but California I would be worried but that place has been so screwed up for so long what shocks the rest of us is simply the status-quo there. Great satire.
This is a perfect example of the new strategy of Marxist socialism.
Karl Marx promoted armed revolution. Lenin and Stalin fostered seizure of agricultural land and factories, to be owned and operated by the state. But party members proved to be very poor managers, the workers lost all interest in toil, causing economic disasters. So today’s socialists, our present administration, have come up with the magical new solution: Rule by consumer diktat:
Just legislate what the proletariat may consume and not consume. That effectively dictates what a private business may put on the market. The entrepreneur is not going to place on the market anything customers are forbidden by law, to use or consume. If the government bans filament light bulbs, manufacturers stop making them. If you are prohibited from owning a car that does not get 60 mpg of ethanol, there won’t be one in the dealer’s showroom, at any price.
The Socialist are delighted with this new strategy and are pushing it everywhere they can, from lollipops to kiddies meals to cars to diesel trucks. It is just so much fun, making the serfs do what you tell them, and the greedy capitalists knuckle under, with threat of fine or special taxes. And the sweet part: you rid yourself of all that grubby, filthy hands-on management. You just sit there on your czarist throne, or playing golf, or taking the kids out for ice-cream, sending out the occasional obligatory improved regulation, while the peons eat their 400 calories hamburgers as their litters romp with their plastic turds. (The little ones really love those!)
That’s exactly what the San Francisco Councilors have done, hugging themselves for being so cute. ” We’ll show those smart-ass greedy fast food maggots what they can do with their cheap marketing tricks to create obese children that don’t conform to our neo-Aryan profile!” What’s next? Only one child per couple, not to exceed nine pounds at birth, and every third one has to be of mixed blood.
Welcome to the New Socialism – The CHANGE we were promised. Hey! It’s working for Mao’s successors.
In Ayn Rand’s work of Prophecy, Doctor Thomas Hendricks, a neurosurgeon, recalled the indignation that lead him to leave medicine: (Something we’d better get used to, thank you, Herr Hussayn)
“Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? …. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything–except the desires of the doctors …. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind — yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating room table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn.”
Me too.
Et tu, Bay Area McDonalds?
What’s next? Only one child per couple, not to exceed nine pounds at birth, and every third one has to be of mixed blood.
Welcome to the New Socialism – The CHANGE we were promised. Hey! It’s working for Mao’s successors.
From what I’ve read I don’t think it’s working there. China suddenly finds itself with a burgeoning crowd of aged and too few young workers “to care for them” in the future.
China is also going to karmically pay for purposely aborting all of those baby girls in favor of baby boys. Now the boy populace in China is in crisis because they far outnumber their female counterparts. What will this mean for China? Imported sex slaves? Love dolls (i.e. ‘realdoll’) become the norm? A bunch of randy, lonely Chinese boys can only mean one thing… CHAOS.
China boyz gone wild. (It ain’t gonna be purdy).
Unless China creates a war to rid itself of its surplus males, China will implode in a fiery, testosterone fueled, angst ridden, male driven Armageddon.
Good luck with that,
Wal-MartChina.Doubt that. Most historical mayhem has been caused by married men.
I would think that the status of women would increase, being that they are less common. Or some form of polygamy with multiple husbands if Chinese culture is inclined to do so.
The Tao states:
“Most historical mayhem has been caused by married men.”
Please qualify that with a study/link or get off the pot.
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2009/04/10/2009-04-10_chinas_overwhelming_surplus_of_men_could_lead_to_increased_crime_study.html
Too many single men means trouble. The role the married men play is to try to get the single men to go be trouble somewhere else.
Delia;
Please qualify that with a study/link or get off the pot.
Mao, Stalin, Mussolini, Alexander the Great, Pol Pot, Napolean, and an entire historical list of kings, emperors, tribal chiefs and so on that have been behind wars, invasions, slaughters and so forth.
(Pot indeed …)
Since the toys are beyond the purview of the health inspectors ( a city function), I would tell the Board of Gays to fuck off.
I love the smell of Fascism in the morning. It smells like…Victory!
…and polycarbonate plastics!
Drive your child to and from school everyday. Only let them out of the house for supervised playdates. And then wonder why they are getting fat. It must be the Happy Meals!!
Think about how many folks lost their homes with the housing bubble crisis? Think about how many parents don’t have a backyard for their child to play in now?
I guess jobless dad can always take little Jimmy to the local park to run a few laps rather than play games on the PS3.
Oh NOES!
Micky deez should tell san fran to go take a flying f***. this is absolutly worng and should not be obeyed. I do want a sinister clown tho. where are allthe protestes? there should be rioting. not for fast food but for whats truly being taken from us. How bout it progressives…how do you like being treated like wittle babies…
I have far fetched idea, why not encourage EXERCISE? Whatever happened to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness?, where the phys ed grade was based on your ability to attain a certain level of fitness (push ups, sit ups, pull ups, running, etc). Something tells me that SF schools dont want to make students feel bad when they can’t do a push up or sit up.
If physical conditioning was stressed from FIRST GRADE there would be no problem with obesity. This just eliminates PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY from children, instead to TEACHING them that if you eat high FAT foods or eat to excess you WILL get fat!
You mean, like, “GET OFF THE COUCH!”?
Dude, that is so yesterday…*scoots saggy butt deeper into computer chair*
How lazy have we become as Americans?
Four words shall suffice an answer:
“Where is the remote?!”
You can’t play dodgeball because it’s violent.
You can’t play tag because someone could get hurt…and it makes slow “Its” feel bad.
You can’t run races because someone will win and someone will lose and someone might scrape a knee.
You can’t let kids have balls during recess because they’ll start playing games.
You can’t let kids organize their own games because some kids will be picked first for a team and some last.
You can’t let kids do what they want during recess, because a couple of kids will be left out.
You really can’t have recess at all.
All this coming from a City that likely coined the word “gay” as a euphemism for homosexual. I suspect the irony escapes them.
Since the satire is based on actual new “no toys in the happy meals” rules, Micky Dees should get together with Burger King, Wendy’s etc and all of them close for a week just to show the board of stupidvisors what the results of chasing them out would be. The sudden unemployment and loss of sales tax revenue may convince them that maybe they should mind their own business and let the fast food industry give their customers what they want.
Idiots.
That idea would be a good “teaching moment” in a “good economy”…
In this economy?
GDP? What GDP?
Not good.
Next San Francisco, will becoming to your house to make sure you do not eat to much of the wrong foods. This is no joke, this is how all Republic`s die with a few telling the many what they can and can not do. The elites believe they have to show us Homers how to live and think. The elites all so want to take money from the rich and give it to the poor, just do not touch their billions of dollars because the elites are smart enough to handle the money they stole from us Homers. If I choose to buy a Happy Meal it is none of our governments business in a free society. Oh but we might cause the government money with health care cost from us Homers eating the wrong foods. Do not worry elites, you already have a plan coming down the pike to kill off the poor and weak, it is called Obamacare. I am glad you elites put a price on a human life! Give me freedom or death, but I will go down fighting for freedom!
I’m gonna buy the crap out of those sad meals and have a good time doing it.
Ouch!
Way too close to reality for satire.
Playing with fire here, and giving them ideas….
Harry Bergeron, I LOVE your name!
This is nothing, wait till the hippies mandate organic food. After that, ban meat, sugar, salt, “chemicals”, etc.
Proof positive that San Francisco would rather children be gay than happy.
I smell an entrepreneurial opportunity here! We set up a genuine Happy Meal smuggling operation. We’ll need to locate suppliers outside the prohibition zone, runners to move the product…anyone know who Pizza Hut gets their stay-hot bags from? Gonna need some of those. What would be a reasonable delivery time? 15 minutes? Need lookouts to warn us of the Food Nazi Patrol, too.
Who wants in? I think this operation could expand beyond Happy Meals soon. And it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a multi-city crime ring.
Seriously, I would be buying happy meals every day if they offered those toys.
♫↑
But yeah, is there anyone out there who really didn’t see this coming when we started banning legal products like tobacco because they are bad for us? Oh, that’s right, all my friends told me I was being silly because slippery slope arguements are always wrong.
Don’t know which is more entertaining: the satire or this comment thread. I think they watched that Seinfeld Soup Nazi episode and thought it was real.
If all they were really interested in was shoving nutritious food down the kiddies’ throats, they would mandate that only Happy Meals that have fruit and yogurt and a low-cal sandwich can include toys.
But that’s not all they’re interested in. They want to destroy the fast-food industry.
Yeah, and as soon as you fat fucks waddling around in your stretch pants and trucker hats need a bypass, who’s gonna pay for it? If I could flip a switch and tomorrow eliminate cigarettes and junk food, I would. And we’d be a healthier more prosperous country. What, does that offend your Constitutional sensibilities? The legalize weed. Have some principles, for god sake, and quit basing your lives on the guesswork of old dead white guys.
Sorry, “Betty” the troll.
I’m “Hot” and in shape by most standards (5′ 7″ 122 pounds)…
I’ve always scored 9.5-9.9 on hot or not even at age 44.
I dunno, girlie. You’re gonna hafta qualify why us tea partiers are so evil and obese.
(hint: The we have the most OBESE ‘poor’ in the world).
I think it’s almost funny that being ‘fat’ used to be considered a sign of ‘wealth’…
Now the wealthy starve themselves to be ‘thin’ and the poor ‘fatten up’.
Please don’t tell me there is a soilent green thing going on here. yuck