As you gather with friends and family around the dinner table this year and celebrate the traditions you hold dear, you may be paying particular attention to your food. Was the turkey you cooked raised on a factory farm or locally, sustainably sourced? Were your vegetables grown from genetically engineered seeds patented by Monsanto or DuPont or on a family farm? Were the workers who picked the vegetables on your table paid fair wages or are they surviving on a minimum wage that makes feeding their own families a daily struggle?
As we all know, concerns about our broken food system -- and how it's affecting our children's health -- are all too real. Food production has changed more in the past 50 years than in the 10,000 years prior. Today, a handful of food corporations including McDonald's are making decisions about our food in distant boardrooms behind closed doors. With the heft of unbridled economic and political power behind them, these corporations are fueling a health crisis where kids are getting sick at staggering rates -- especially in low-income communities and communities of color.
These fundamental food justice issues are why we launched Value [the] Meal over five years ago. And why we have rallied tens of thousands of people to take action to challenge the face and the rotten core of this broken food system: McDonald's. No single entity has done more to shape today's food supply, nor to drive demand for its unhealthy output.
But as I look back at our work together over the past five years, I take hope. Because together, we are making tremendous progress to protect our children's health, fix our broken food system, and challenge the predatory marketing at the root of today's ballooning health crisis.
Tens of thousands of people across the country are exposing the truth behind McDonald's $39 billion brand, reducing McDonald's power and dominance over our food system. Day by day, we are getting closer to our shared vision of a world where we all have access to affordable, nutritious food that nourishes our bodies -- not makes us sick. Where corporations are no longer profiting at the expense of our children's health. And where children aren't targeted by marketing at every turn hooking them on junk food brands for life.
We've fundamentally shifted the landscape in which McDonald's does business. Increasingly, the public is losing its appetite for the burger giant and its predatory marketing practices. Articles like this, this, and this demonstrate the public's growing weariness with McDonald's. The fast-food behemoth has worked for decades to silence criticism from moms and health professionals. But today, these very people are calling out the corporation for manipulating kids into eating unhealthy food. This shift in public climate is moving hospital after hospital across the country to kick out McDonald's stores. Last year, even Michelle Obama recognized marketing's driving force behind today's health crisis, calling for nationwide restrictions on marketing junk food to kids in schools.
And we're exposing the shaky foundation of the burger giant's so-called charity work -- which it exploits to market its junk food brand. The release of our report in 2013 exposed how McDonald's uses the Ronald McDonald House Charities as a marketing and branding vehicle, while contributing less than one-fifth of the charities' actual funding.
But that's not all. As Big Food exports its abuses to low-income countries across the world, we are at the cutting edge of a movement to secure strong standards to protect kids' health globally. In 2010 we played an integral role in supporting the World Health Organization's development of strong recommendations to restrict predatory junk food marketing to children. Thanks to the incredible strides made by public health champions globally and our campaign connecting the fast food industry's abuses to its negative impact on children's health, progress is already afoot. In Latin America, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico have all taken powerful stands for children's health. To name just one example, Chile, inspired by San Francisco's groundbreaking ordinance, has banned marketing of toys and visuals that appeal to kids in children's food.
McDonald's response? Instead of making substantive changes -- such as ending its predatory kid-targeted marketing, abusive labor practices, or political interference -- McDonald's top executives are turning to more of the same. But its new marketing efforts -- a so-called "transparency" campaign and the revamping of outdated marketing icons -- are falling flat. The public isn't buying it…literally. It's no surprise that it just released its worst third-quarter earnings in more than 11 years.
As I take stock of where we are now, my excitement about what we will accomplish together in the next five years grows even stronger. Together, we will continue to pressure McDonald"s until it stops marketing to kids, and ensure today's children aren't tomorrow's diabetic adults…or worse yet, tomorrow's diabetic kids. Together, we will continue to challenge McDonald's abusive practices. Together, we will reverse disease rates and transform the food system globally.
We are going to win. But we need your help to win faster. So, this Thanksgiving, before you sit down to break bread with your loved ones, take action. Take a stand for children's health and tell McDonald's to Retire Ronald.
Sriram Madhusoodanan is Campaign Director for Value [the] Meal
