Temptation of the Week: Fruit and dairy at McDonald's

Fruit and dairy. The last two words you would associate with McDonald's.

Yet, fruit and dairy are the stars of the new McDonald's ad campaign (which kicks off today), along with Ferris and his pet goat. The pet goat eats everything in sight, so Ferris tries to teach the goat to eat a balanced diet. The picture of a balanced diet is a basket with a fried chicken leg, bread, apple, and carrots alongside a bottle of milk. The rest of the way, it's all about the fruit and dairy.

McDonald's has made strides, such as they are, in tweaking the Happy Meals. This ad should have been discarded like the garbage that the goat eats.

The goat represents the way we eat, pushing things into our mouth at random with no forethought. Then the goat gets help from Ferris = eat a balanced diet. But of course, this isn't what the goat eats. In fact, we don't see the goat eating any food. We see the goat drinking cow's milk (don't think too hard about that one). In the McDonald's, we see Ferris has chicken nuggets, French fries, apples, and milk, but we never see him eat. Ferris grabs the apple slice but we don't see him eating food.

The goat is now big and strong, so he thinks, because he has had fruit and dairy. We don't see the goat eating the fruit, though he and Ferris would do better with a less-sugared fruit, like just about any other fruit in existence. Apples are very high in natural sugar.

If you are going to McDonald's for fruit and dairy, you can buy a gallon of milk for about twice the cost of a half-pint at McDonald's (there are 16 half-pints in a gallon). And you can get apples and other assorted fruit, probably better tasting fruit, at a farmers market or a grocery store.

The three foods best associated with McDonald's are hamburgers, fries, and soft drinks. As someone who grew up in a long ago time, we had the Hamburglar, the small French fry packet with legs, and Grimace's obsession with milkshakes. These merry band of food tie-ins were led by a clown aimed at children.

We were filled with emotional tie-ins to the fast food but we weren't filled with irony. We knew that hamburgers and fries weren't everyday food. If you have a treat every day, it's no longer a treat.

Watching McDonald's push fruit and dairy is like watching Alicia Silverstone do a commercial for a steakhouse; it's unnatural. McDonald's manages to push this without a human eating any food and the only drink comes from a goat; it's not like Alicia is going to put the steak in her mouth.

If McDonald's thinks it is important to be smarter in marketing to children, show a child, a live child, eating an apple slice and drinking some milk. See the child also eat a French fry and a small bite from a hamburger and chicken nugget. Have the announcer point out that it takes all kinds of food to give a young child energy to deal with the day. The child won't just live on fruit and dairy, but also recognize that constant fast food won't cut it either. Then, if nothing else, the commercial will be honest. And that would be a refreshing change in marketing fast food to kids.

photo credit: McDonald's