McDonald’s shareholders vote to continue ignoring childhood obesity

Shareholders at the McDonald’s annual meeting today voted down a motion to assess “the company’s policy responses to growing evidence of linkages between fast food and childhood obesity, diet-related diseases and other impacts on children’s health.”

The motion was brought forward by the shareholder advocacy group Corporate Accountability International. However, only 6.4 per cent of McDonald’s shareholders voted in favour of the resolution.

“McDonald’s can no longer ignore the spiraling costs of its business practices on our children’s health and on our health-care system,” said Andrew Bremer, a pediatric endocrinologist.

“Shut up, we have salads!” responded CEO Jim Skinner, probably.

The company says it offers a variety of foods and that nutritional information is available to its customers, so maybe try exercising a bit of personal responsibility for a change. It’s not like McDonald’s advertises itself as selling health food or Nutella, although there must be something addictive they put in the Big Mac. Nothing can taste that good without heroin.

Advertising Age[cite type=image url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:McD-Big-Mac.jpg"]Wikimedia