Happy Meals

The city council in San Francisco recently banned restaurants such as McDonald's from including toy giveaways in Happy Meal-type kids' menu items, in an attempt to thwart the rise of childhood obesity.

Nice try, but this policy isn't likely to have much of an effect. The San Francisco City Council is banning free toys to make the meals less appealing to children. But if the meals actually have an appropriate amount of calories for children, why would they want to do that? This policy likely has more to do with emotion and ideology than actual facts.

It's standard marketing: pitch your product to the most easily persuadable.