Ronald needs to retire. Now.

Early retirement is a good thing, if your name is Ronald McDonald. That's what a number of children's health advocates claimed at a press conference today.

For nearly 50 years the smiley clown has been successfully pushing fatty fast food to children. Thirty years ago no one talked about childhood obesity because it was so rare. Sadly that is no longer the case. Newspaper articles recently started categorizing children as obese and extremely obese.

Ronald gets a lot of some credit for this tragic situation. The McDonald's Corporation spends more than a billion dollars on marketing in the U.S. alone, much of it spent on advertising directly to children. The fast food giant, in fact, pioneered the concept of marketing to children and spawned a host of imitators.

Children are very susceptible to advertising and marketing messages. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, "advertising directed to children in inherently deceptive and exploits children under the age of eight."

I agree with all of the children's and health advocates. It's time for Ronald to go.

~ Paula

Soda's Spin

Now here's a fair represenation of the soda industry's supposedly "voluntary" efforts to control sale of their sodas on school campuses. What a bunch of hypocrites. Advocates all over the nation busted their bums to pry Coke out of schools, with their legion of lawyers, lobbyists and politicians screaming and fighting every step of the way. And now, with laws in place banning their empty calories from schools, they pretend it was their idea. Shame, shame, shame... chain of fools!

We're published - twice over!

In a recent issue of PR News, our ground-breaking media advocacy work on behalf of California's menu labeling law was featured. The four-page analysis recognized our innovative approach that helped make California the first state in the nation to require restaurants to offer up basic nutrition information -- who knew that an Awesome Blossom had 3,000 calories!

Then, in what can only be payback for years of poring through tedious college textbooks, we find that we're now being taught in school. Yep, from page 199 to 212 in the 8th edition of Public Relations Cases, college PR students are learning about our successful efforts with the California Center for Public Health Advocacy to force legislators to take a role in addressing childhood obesity.

- Mike

Bad Mom Turned Food Detective

I had the special opportunity to listen in on best-selling authors Michael Pollan and Dr. David Kessler in San Francisco last Wednesday. To say this influenced me is an understatement. The dialogue opened my eyes so wide that this Southern California girl has fully embraced the Bay Area Foodie World.

Upon joining Brown-Miller Communications six years ago, I was immersed in what was the beginning of the childhood obesity transformation. This week, I witnessed how the seeds have become a movement to look at food and how it affects us and, more importantly, our future generations. Thank you, first lady Michelle Obama for expanding this dialogue.

As a mother of two, it occurred to me that the guilt I often felt when it came to feeding the right things to my children wasn’t completely in my control. I constantly had to fight the marketing messages that surround all of us as we wake up. Answering my children’s questions “why can’t we have soda?” or “what’s wrong with the turkey, cheese and crackers in the cute box?” became an annoying routine while shopping. Through our work with the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, I get the issues, and I know how advertising messages can be deceiving. But my children don’t, and I am often left feeling like the “bad mom” who deprives my children of sweets or the experience of “being just a kid.”

This week, however, I felt I had gained some armor of strength from Pollan and Kessler’s discussion of how our culture of overindulgence and over-processed industry policies is eating us from the inside out. We have so much more work to do to reverse the bad policies and habits that have taken decades to establish, and the challenge has only begun.

Inspired by the conversation, it moved me to have a dialogue of my own with my family. I pulled out my signed copy of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Young Reader’s Edition, and invited the kids to become food detectives with me. It’s time to change the dialogue of food, and it starts at home. I invite you to do the same.

~ Muriel

photo credit: wellnessgossip.com

When we say “Text Book” we really mean it!

That’s right, a Brown•Miller Communications public relations campaign, “Giving Legislators a Role in Correcting California’s Childhood Obesity Crisis,” is one of the case studies in the eighth edition of Public Relations Cases by Jerry A. Hendrix and Darrell C. Hayes.

It’s not the first time a BMC campaign has been in a college text book. Several years ago it was brought to our attention that a campaign we put together for Kendall-Jackson Vineyard Estates mysteriously appeared (without our permission) in a college text book. However, in this case we worked with the writers and our client to make sure all the ‘t’s’ were crossed and ‘i’s’ were dotted.

If you’d like to get your own copy to see our campaign (and lots of others as well), you can get the book through Amazon. This also explains why we keep getting emails from college students all across the nation asking for more details on the campaign.

Ken

Florez announces penny per teaspoon soda tax

In the face of a $41 billion statewide obesity epidemic, California Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez today introduced legislation to tax sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages to fund childhood obesity programs.

The Florez bill would levy a penny for every teaspoon of added sugar in commercial beverages sold. It's estimated the excise tax on beverage distributors would raise $1.5 billion a year for California cities and schools to pay for childhood obesity prevention programs.

A growing body of research highlighting the central role of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages in driving the obesity epidemic prompted the senator's bill, including a study from one of our client's last year.

"When Michelle Obama introduced her children's health initiative last week she explained that our children didn't do this to themselves," said Dr. Harold Goldstein of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy. "They didn't create an environment where high sugar sodas are the cheapest, easiest drink to find. We did that to them. We have a responsibility to fix it and this bill is the right way to start."

~ Nicole

Big food fight in Italy as McDonald's introduces McItaly burgers

A food fight erupts as Italian Agriculture Minister Luca Zaia tries to defend his new partnership with McDonald's.

My FaceBook page is boiling with discussions about Italian children being more obese than American children while the Agriculture Minister is promoting the new McItaly burger.

The country that gave birth to the Slow Food Movement isn't buying his argument that his partnership with McDonald's will provide important new markets and income for Italian farmers.

Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Foods, wrote a front-page opinion-piece challenging Zaia to give a kilo-by-kilo accounting of how much farmers are actually getting paid because of the deal.

Small sustainable farmers are not going to benefit from this new partnership, no matter what Zaia claims. Neither are Italian children.