CSPI has threatened to sue McDonald’s if it doesn’t stop offering toys with its Happy Meals. According to CNN:

“McDonald’s is the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children,” CSPI’s litigation director, Stephen Gardner, said in a prepared statement. “It’s a creepy and predatory practice that warrants an injunction.”

That CSPI has a “litigation director” tells you most of what you need to know about the organization. That it compares a business to a child molester — for offering a free toy with its chicken nuggets — tells you the rest.

CSPI stands for Center for Science in the Public Interest, though we might take issue with some of that. Its “science” is often weak and since the “public” — the children part of the public — seems very “interested” in eating Happy Meals and playing with toys, it is hard to agree that CSPI represents their interests by trying to ban the toys. So, “science” is mostly out and “public interest” is definitely out. What we’re left with is “center.” No objection there. It is a center. Mainly it is a center of meddling and hyperbole and being annoying.

I want my son to be able to eat a Happy Meal and get the latest crappy toy promoting some dumb movie. It’s his birthright as an American. And I don’t worry about the group’s claim that “using toys to entice children instills bad eating habits and puts kids at higher risk of developing obesity, diabetes, or other diet-related diseases over the course of their lifetime.”

Our son is thin, because he has good genes — his mother and father are thin — and plays outside all day long and has good eating habits, because Happy Meal toys once in a while can’t override the lessons and habits instilled at home. Our son doesn’t watch hours of TV or play video games all day, though he watches and plays sometimes. He doesn’t drink soda. We don’t choose to eat at McDonald’s five days a week. These are decisions we make every day as his parents. He’s not on a health-food diet — he has his share of ice cream, cookies, pizza, all the rest of the delicious food you can eat when you’re an active kid.

Eventually, if they want to be reasonably thin, most people have to cut back on eating what they ate when they were kids or they will gain weight and have high cholesterol. But part of the joy of childhood is being able to eat some sweets and burgers and Yodels without worrying about your waistline or cholesterol.

When I was a kid — through my 20s, even — I could eat anything I wanted. I was so active, playing sports and running around, I simply didn’t have to think about calories (except maybe getting enough of them to make up for all the calories I was burning). Not every kid was like that, but many were. I don’t remember my friends having to worry about calories or fat content. Maybe it was different with the girls back then — I don’t know if girls played sports as much then as they do now. But the boys were outside playing sports all the time, getting into pick-up games, riding bikes, just running around.

It isn’t like we didn’t have TV or video games when we were kids. I am part of the Atari/Star Wars generation. We went to the arcade to play Donkey Kong Junior and Joust and Robotron. At home, we played Atari and then Intellivision (the latter at a friend’s house). We had a fun baseball game on our Commodore 64. We played board games. We played Dungeons & Dragons. We watched cartoons. We played with action figures. We went to the movies. We didn’t have as many video game and TV options as kids have today, but we had lots of them, and we still managed to run around outside, because our parents told us to get the hell out of the house, and because we wanted to. Even in the house, we ran around.

Maybe the block we live on now is in a time-warp. Maybe it’s because we live in the suburbs. Whatever the reason, all day long, as soon as the weather isn’t freezing cold, the kids in our neighborhood play outside. Yes, they have video games, but even in the snow, they’re out there running, sledding, throwing snowballs. There is, out of 20 or so kids at my son’s morning school bus stop, only one child who is clearly overweight. Most of the rest are see-their-ribs thin. Maybe by middle school that will change and they’ll all be fat. I don’t think it will be because of Happy Meals.

The Happy Meal was born in 1979. We kids liked it. It didn’t make us obese. When the toy broke five minutes after getting it home, we went back to running around and playing and being thin. And it isn’t that our parents cooked us low-fat meals compared to parents today. My mother worked, so we ate plenty of take-out and TV dinners. There were home-cooked meals, but none of them were low-carb or low-fat. Lots of macaroni and cheese. Eggs and red meat and fried foods were common. We drank soda. Kids and teens drank fattening whole milk back then, unlike today, when many kids drink low-fat milk. Calorie counts were not posted next to fast-food menus like they are today.

When I was a kid, my crazy great-grandmother used to yell at the kids — really scream — if we didn’t finish the food on our plates. She was so worried because, as she saw it, all of the kids were too thin, practically starving. She used to force us to drink milkshakes — we’re talking whole milk, big scoops of ice cream, and eggs — raw eggs, like Rocky drank — that she made in the blender.

Our son eats healthy food generally at home — fruit, wheat bread — but we’re not on an anti-processed kick. Frozen waffles are fine for breakfast, though he often eats cereal, and in our house that means Cheerios with just a bit of a sweet cereal (Honey Nut Cheerios) mixed in (plus an entire sliced banana), not a whole bowl of Frosted Flakes like I ate when I was a kid.

When our family does go to McDonald’s or other fast food restaurants — which we don’t do often — we’re delighted if our son eats a fattening burger. As my mother-in-law says, he could use some meat on his bones. But still, though he eats ice cream and plenty of fun foods, we do tend to make some healthy choices as well. In recent years, Burger King has offered apple slices as an optional replacement for french fries. When my son has a Happy Meal, he has the apples. McDonald’s points out that it offers similar options:

McDonald’s disagreed with the CSPI’s criticism, saying that its U.S. advertising campaign is focused on low-calorie Happy Meals.

“We couldn’t disagree more with the misrepresentation of our food and marketing practices,” McDonald’s spokesman William Whitman said in a prepared statement.

“McDonald’s is committed to a responsible approach to our menu, and our Happy Meal offerings,” he said. “We have added more choice and variety than ever before, a fact that has been widely reported and recognized.”

CSPI director Michael Jacobson acknowledged that parents bear much of the responsibility for children’s eating habit — a criticism industry defenders often levy.

“But multi-billion-dollar corporations make parents’ job nearly impossible by giving away toys and bombarding kids with slick advertising,” he said.

It is CSPI’s last point that is most troubling. Parents around the world and throughout history have had to face war, famine, smallpox, losing several children to one disease or another — they have had to make terribly difficult decisions and be strong in harrowing circumstances to do what is right for their children. Over the last few centuries, millions of them have left their homelands and brought their small children to a new country with a strange culture and foreign language for a chance at a better life. Parents have faced what we today might see as impossible challenges, but they did it.

Even parents today face tough challenges, and part of being a parent might include having to tell the kids that the dog died, at some point that grandma died, and, all too often, that mommy and daddy are getting divorced. Those are difficult things to do. They are, perhaps, just a little bit harder than telling your kid he can’t have the Happy Meal.

Parents have done all of these difficult things, but we’re supposed to accept that “multi-billion-dollar corporations make parents’ jobs nearly impossible by giving away toys and bombarding children with slick advertising.” Really? Impossible? Wow. Parents sure do have it tough today.

Saying “no” to your kid who wants a third cookie is easy. Telling your kid that you’re not getting him the Happy Meal is easy. Parents have choices to make, but they aren’t impossible choices. Choosing to get your fat child the apples and not the french fries is easy. Choosing to get him low-fat milk instead of soda is easy. Choosing not to go to McDonald’s in the first place is easy. These are the easy parts of being a parent — making these choices is a parent’s job.

If parents don’t do it, don’t make excuses for them by saying they had an impossible choice. Sophie had an impossible choice. Parents at the fast-food counter don’t.

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