Thursday, January 20, 2011

How the Happy Meal ban explains San Francisco - Page 1 - News - San Francisco - SF Weekly

How the Happy Meal ban explains San Francisco - Page 1 - News - San Francisco - SF Weekly: "In August 2010, San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar decided that city intervention was needed to help him raise his daughter.

As Mar later told reporters, he was shocked to discover a trove of toys from McDonald's Happy Meals stashed in her room. Mar was the one taking his daughter to McDonald's and buying the food — but he said that the 'pester power' of a preteen was simply too much for him to withstand on his own. So he proposed that the city ban restaurants from including toys with meals of more than 600 calories that lack agreed-upon amounts of fruits and vegetables.

Mar's 'Healthy Meal Incentive Ordinance' subsequently passed in November by an 8-3 vote in the Board of Supervisors — a veto-proof majority. Barring legal action, the Happy Meal as we know it will be verboten in San Francisco come Dec. 1. Eric Mar's daughter has been saved.

Both conservative blowhard Bill O'Reilly and left-leaning comedian Lewis Black — and many, many people in-between — were left to wonder 'What the hell?' in the wake of San Francisco's ban. It's not the first time. In recent years, San Francisco government has passed numerous laws to make us healthier, greener, and — in the city's eyes — all-around better people. Whether we like it or not. This includes banning the sale of cigarettes in drugstores, and, later, supermarkets; banning plastic bags in large chain stores; banning bottled water in City Hall, and the sale of soft drinks on government property; banning the declawing of cats; making composting mandatory; and forbidding city departments from doing business with companies that were involved in the (pre–Civil War) slave trade, yet haven't publicly atoned.

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Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

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