A Happy Meal... Every Time

McDonalds made Ray Kroc a billionaire.

It also made Morgan Spurlock fat.

It also makes my six-year old daughter VERY happy.

And isn’t that all that matters.

Pick a day, pick a time -- ask my daughter where she wants to go eat and the answer is always McDonalds.

(P.S.  I’m not applying for a commercial here, really I’m not, but if you like the concept, contact her agent.)

A couple of days ago my six-year old had some visitors over for a play date.

Her three-year old cousin from my wife’s brother’s family.

And her three-year old cousin from my wife’s sister’s family.

We decided to have a girls day out (+1) at the mall with my wife, the three girls and me.

On our way there, we were getting a little hungry, so we stopped at... well, you know where we stopped.

And when we got there, the order was as predictable as a Hugh Grant movie.

“I’ll have the Happy Meal.  Me too.  Me too.”

Wow, I didn’t see that coming.

The truth is they all ordered the little plastic toy with whatever food it came with.

Meanwhile, my wife got the Grilled Chicken Ranch BLT Sandwich with no Ranch.

And since we had a 2-for-1 coupon, I too had the Grilled Chicken Ranch BLT Sandwich with no Ranch.

Of course, no meal at Mickey D’s is complete without a large order of fries, so we got one of those too.

On the back of the paper that our food came on was a complete listing of the nutrition facts for all of the foods at McDonalds.

I know, we should’ve covered it in ketchup before we could look.

But like a five-car pileup on the freeway, we HAD to look.

So after each girl took one big bite of their Happy Meal and became instantly stuffed, we sent them off to that cesspool of disgust known as PlayLand.

That’s where little kids from around the neighborhood cough and sneeze their way through a series of plastic tubes and sealed in walkways.

But of course, “Please make sure you take off your shoes little Johnny, Ronald would hate for you to get PlayLand dirty.”

I couldn’t find a suggestion box, but if I did....

I would suggest you put a water hose at the bottom of one of those slides, so you can spray the scum off the kids when they are done playing.

Just a thought.

Well, while the girls were sliding around in some other kids’ runny nose (and LOVING it), that gave my wife and I time to check out the nutritional facts for the foods we were trying to digest.

Believe it or not, not everything was totally bad for you.

For example, the brand new “Real Fruit" Smoothies.

I got a couple of coupons in the Sunday paper for a free one, so I got one for the girls and one for me.

They actually made them in a real blender.  I heard it.

I just hope they used real bananas and real strawberries in the real blender for my "Real Strawberry Banana Smoothie". 

The good news is each smoothie had only 210 calories.

The bad news is pretty much everything else on the menu was a diet crusher.

The Angus Deluxe Burger, 750 calories.

The Big Mac, 29 grams of fat.

The Breakfast Burrito with Sausage, 1390 mg of sodium.

The Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken had TEN TIMES more salt than an entire breast of Chicken Saltimbocca at Maggiano’s.

And that dish has “salt” in its name.

As for those fries, we just HAD to have.

Well those fries have more calories (500) than a 6-inch Roast Beef Sub at Subway (460), with DOUBLE MEAT AND DOUBLE CHEESE.

But unlike Mark Antony (or Jennifer Lopez), I’m not here to bury McDonalds, I come to praise them.

Have you tried the Sausage McMuffin with Egg?

Is there any better way to start the day?

Who cares that there are 450 calories and 285 mg of cholesterol and 920 mg of sodium and 27 grams of fat.

Obviously I don’t.

And neither does my daughter.

As long as she gets that pink plastic horse.