This Thursday, April 7, Élise Lucet and her team are offering a new issue of “Cash Investigation” on France 2 devoted to McDonald’s. archyde news, marketing power of the famous American multinational on children, influence, quality of meals, working conditions, the survey reveals the phenomenal power of the group… but also its failings. The first minutes of the report were devoted to the nutritional quality of the famous Happy Meal: a passage that exasperated many Internet users.
“How’s that at McDonald’s?“This is precisely the title of the new investigation of “Cash Investigation” broadcast this Thursday evening, on France 2. Élise Lucet and her team today take a look behind the scenes of a multinational that has been comfortably established in France for over forty years: McDonald’s. With 1,400 restaurants established and some 2 million meals distributed every day in France, the American firm is now an integral part of the daily lives of many French people and the happiness of the little ones, a target particularly popular with the burger giant. To understand the true power of the brand on the little ones, the show offered an experience to a panel of young guinea pigs by inviting them to the “Cash Restaurant”, a kind of “Cash” style fast food. On one side, McDo-colored boxes containing Happy Meal menus (with burgers nuggets, fries and a bit of fruit and vegetables, etc.), on the other, neutral-colored boxes also containing Happy Meal menus. The result is indisputable: the young guinea pigs seated in front of the McDo-colored boxes would not exchange their menus for anything in the world with those of the anonymous boxes. An example that illustrates the real power that the famous yellow and red colors of the boxes have on the habits and behavior of children…
“Thank you Elise Lucet!”
A few moments later, Elise Lucet goes to meet a nutritionist doctor, Corinne Chicheportiche, to submit to her the content of a Happy Meal menu. “We can only congratulate McDo: there we have fibers: we have them in the tomatoes, we have them in the apples, we say to ourselves “super!”. Are we going to have a meal that will be complete for a child? asks the doctor. His verdict is clear: the quantity of a meal contained in a Happy Meal is not sufficient. According to Corinne Chicheportiche, this meal does not meet the nutritional needs of a child and would prevent him from reaching satiety. The risk ? Asking for too much and too bulky a snack at 4 p.m. In fact, to meet the child’s nutritional needs, particularly in iron, the report explains that it would take not one but four and a half cheeseburgers to reach the iron goal… which would, on the other hand, explode the counters in in terms of calories and fats: a situation totally incompatible with a balanced diet. This explanation has been the subject of criticism on the show: for the twittos, it is quite logical: McDo and dietetics do not really go together …