Medical Student Takes Aim at McDonald’s for Marketing to Children

A second year medical student at Oregon Health & Science University, he urged the Oregon Medical Association recently to sign a letter asking McDonald’s to end its marketing promotions to children and encourage the American Medical Association to do likewise.  

 

“We have an epidemic of childhood obesity in this country,” Bruno told them. “It’s up to us as physicians to do all we can at the local and national level to curb this epidemic and go beyond the exam room. We have to stop this predatory marketing on children who don’t have the ability to discern the facts.”

 

But Bruno’s efforts were rebuffed because physicians were hesitant to take on the fast food chain.  

 

“McDonald’s isn’t the only culprit,” said Dr. Fran Biagioli, who practices family medicine at OHSU. “Parents should start saying no to their children.”

 

The OMA doesn’t target individual companies, said Dr. Sylvia Emory, with the Westmoreland Clinic in Eugene. “We did take on the tobacco industry with marketing to kids and made good headway. But singling out one company may not be where we want to go. We need to continue the fight on obesity on multiple fronts.”

 

Bruno attempted to modify his resolution, calling upon all fast food corporations to stop their marketing campaigns, but failed because of a procedural vote.

 

“Cutting off the discussion was very unfortunate, but it’s not shocking to accept that a group of medical professionals will act in their own interest,” said Bruno who plans to   continue attending such meetings to bring the student perspective. “I’m going to keep encouraging them to reconnect with the values that brought them into medicine -- the interests of their patients should be above their own.”

 

He remains optimistic about medical students becoming more involved and raising their voices in professional societies.

 

“We’re not giving up and recognize that change is difficult with groups of people who consider themselves experts in a field,” he said.

 

Earlier, Bruno helped convince the Oregon Academy of Family Physicians to call upon all fast food chains to immediately cease end their marketing to children.  

 

A national campaign, launched by Corporate Accountability International, a nonprofit watchdog group, gathered more than 600 signatures from health professionals and medical organizations, calling upon McDonald’s to stop marketing junk food to kids and retire Ronald McDonald. Those letters were presented at McDonald’s annual shareholder meeting. Even though the CEO of McDonald’s refused to even consider changing its policies, the letter writing campaign continues drawing momentum at www.lettertomcdonalds.org

 

The need is compelling, Bruno said. Statistics show that the percentage of obese children has tripled among those aged 2 to 5 and quadrupled in those aged 6 to 11 in the last 30 years.

 

The average preschooler sees 2.8 television ads per day for fast food, and 40 percent of parents reported that their child asks to go to McDonald’s at least once a week, with 15 percent of preschoolers asking to go every day, according to the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

 

And McDonald’s, which is the largest fast food vendor in the world, serves French fries or another unhealthy snack in its Happy Meals more than 84 percent of the time, Bruno learned.

 

Coca Cola is another culprit.

 

Bruno also led a campaign among his student congress, objecting to a partnership between the American Association of Family Practitioners and Coca Cola, which sponsors advertisements on its website where parents can find healthy information – www.familydoctor.org. But his resolution failed by one vote.

 

“We tried to make a big splash but students are idealistic and don’t look at the conflict of interest,” he said. “It’s shocking to have a partnership between Coca Cola and family physicians since they’re trying to combat obesity, and now there’s a conflicting message from the industry that hurts our case. Why should we be aligning ourselves with a product that could be harmful to our patients?”

 

He’s heard that the national association is receiving between $500,000-800,000 from Coca Cola to run the advertisement. However, that number could not be substantiated.

 

Kerry Gonzales, the executive director of the OAFP, said her physicians attempted to block the national association from accepting the Coca Cola advertisements when its Congress met last September. But it was resoundingly defeated.  

 

“We were a very vocal minority,” she said. “And this was a very big issue in Oregon and California, and a few members were very unhappy and quit over the issue. But everyone seemed very appeased when the AAFP assured them that Coca Cola wouldn’t have any input into the content of the website. We were mostly upset by the appearance of the advertisement.”

 

Since then, her members have been monitoring the content of the website. “As far as we can tell, Coca Cola hasn’t had any impact on the editorial content or medical advice.”