The television advertising of food and drink to children has been widely covered in the news over recent months because of changes that have been made to the regulations that govern it, by the independent regulator, Ofcom.
At McDonald's we have always made television advertising to promote our Happy Meals to children and as we will be continuing to do so, we thought that you might be interested in finding out why.
We talk to customers regularly about our Happy Meals, our marketing and what it's like to bring your children to McDonald's. The majority of mums and dads tell us that they are comfortable with our advertising because they are in control of what their children eat and when they come to McDonald's. Some people are aware that advertising is regulated and are reassured by this.
The new restrictions placed on advertising to children relate to food and drinks that are classified as being high in fat, salt and sugar - the distinction is made by a Nutrient Profiling Model created by the UK's Food Standards Agency. Three quarters of our Happy Meal menu items are not deemed to be high in fat salt and sugar and can therefore continue to feature in television advertisements that are aimed at children.
If you have any questions about our advertising, our food or any other aspect of McDonald's why not visit makeupyourownmind.co.uk which is a website that we set up so that people could find out whatever they want to know about us.
Here are a few popular questions and their answers:
Q: Why do you advertise to children?
A: We advertise to children because they're our customers. We have a children's menu and our restaurants are fun places for families to eat high quality, safe and affordable food
Q: Why don't you stop advertising to children altogether?
A: We have asked parents that very question in research and the response has been that they don't mind as long as we're advertising responsibly to children. We have made significant changes to our menu in the past few years to include items such as Tropicana Orange Juice, mineral water, fruit bags, carrot sticks and organic semi-skimmed milk as well as reductions in fat, salt and sugar content to existing menu items such as the salt levels in Chicken McNuggets. Ofcom's regulations are aimed at improving children's diets and we believe the changes we've made are the type of responsible behaviour that supports this aim.
Q: How will your advertising to children different be different from before?
A: Looking forward, we intend to focus more on our food using fun facts and figures, physical activity and children's favourite characters to promote items such as our fruit bags (as we did recently with Scooby Doo), carrot sticks and organic semi-skimmed milk. We also hope this will make the decision to buy these kinds of items a little bit easier for parents and children.
Q: Where will your advertising to children be seen?
A: As most of our Happy meal food is non-HFSS, as rated against the Food Standard Agency's Nutritional Profile model that indicates what food can or can't be advertised to children according to the Ofcom regulations, you will continue to see McDonald's advertising on children's commercial TV channels.
