In August, McDonald’s gave away wristband pedometers, called “Step It” trackers, with Happy Meals with the intent of getting kids active and moving. Although this seems like a good move, fitness trackers being given away at McDonald’s has the same irking irony to it that you feel when your dentist gives out candy bars and lollipops. It just doesn’t quite feel right.
Even more ironically: the company had to safety recall approximately 29 million trackers after reports of skin irritation and blistering burns on kids’ wrists.
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In a country like America, which is known for our fast food addictions, the message we are sending to kids by handing out fitness trackers with French fries is odd and confusing. There’s nothing wrong with a Happy Meal as a treat once in a while or a meal in a pinch, but it should not be marketed as a “healthy” food to have every day.
Associating fast food with images of health as a selling tactic is not uncommon, however. Jennifer Edmond, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, told CNN about her skepticism: “It’s a common tactic used by food manufacturers. They promote their products alongside healthy lifestyles,” she says. Edmond describes this as dangerous because it is intended to distract parents from the unhealthiness of the food by “focusing more on the ‘energy out’ side of the weight gain equation than considering energy intake.” And when a standard Happy Meal (cheeseburger, apple slices, milk jug, and fries) contains around 530 calories, which would take hours for kids to walk off, it wouldn’t be hard to tilt the “energy in-energy out” equation far towards the “energy in” side.
More than an attention-diverting marketing tactic, associating burning off calories directly with unhealthy food has a potentially negative impact on kids’ relationship with food, calories, and exercise. Exercise for kids should be focused on being active for fun, spending time with family, and practicing a skill like soccer or softball. Physical activity is important, but it should be a reward in itself, not a punishment for eating fries. While I’m sure some kids have fun using pedometers to be competitive and turn walking into a game, they should at least be given pedometers outside of the context of unhealthy food, such as in physical education class. That way, they are learning to view being active as part of a healthy lifestyle and not as a way to make amends for a cheeseburger.
In order to combat both childhood obesity rates and rates of anorexia, bulimia, and body dysmorphia, it is important that we try to instill a healthy perspective in kids. Rather than simply trying to encourage them to burn calories, we should encourage them to eat healthy food because it makes them feel good (and it still tastes good!), and run around on the playground because they enjoy it. Although handing them a pedometer with a Happy Meal may encourage kids to be more active for a day, the real solution lies in teaching them permanent ways to live well.
