To take DD 5 to McDonald's every other weekend?

[quincyquince]

She's gluten free, so has a portion of small chips and either a small mcflurry or orange juice or sauce with the chips.

We go after swimming.

This is ok, right? My friend thinks it's awful that she goes twice a month. But it's not like she's having the processed bread and cheese and stuff all the time?

Oh give over. What a silly response.

The fries in McDonalds are 14% sunflower/rapeseed oil which is quite a huge amount of fat. Eating deep fried food regularly is also linked to various cancers.

A McFlurry contains between 20-34g of sugar, along with various oils, stabilisers and artificial flavours.

Basically, they’re both ultra processed foods and I wouldn’t take a child there regularly. Saying it’s “just potatoes” or “just ice cream” is deliberately misleading.

No it's not, if my child has wheat she gets tummy aches and loose stools and soils herself.
We give her wheat products every so often to see, and same result. And when she's accidentally been given it, same result.

So, thanks for telling me I'm talking bullshit.

She doesn't like hash browns. (No child of mine! 🤣)

If she has a burger,and we take a roll for her, the meal is too big for her. Plus she actually doesn't like most of the products, even if she wasn't gf.

Like I say, she'll sometimes have the grilled chicken salad, as she's a weirdo that loves salad, but doesn't like a lot of the food other kids do... Fat chips, hash browns, nuggets, fish fingers... All nope! She prefers things like chicken drumsticks or lamb chops 🤣

Great question! Very much my thoughts while reading the comments on this thread.

For me this is kind of the point I was making. You’re saying…

mcdonalds - food wise - is not a ‘treat’ for her.

the treat is going somewhere different after swimming just with you.

so why reinforce a brain leap for her that junk food is treat food?

she actually likes good food already! She has joy in that. So why tell her UPF is a treat?

@quincyquince honestly, every two weeks is more than fine. I’d do and have done every week (as the child being treated and the parent doing the treating) and there was more than just fries and ice cream. People here acting like it’s crack and your kid will be a meth head because she ate fries 26 times in a year?! Some people live in another world.

Seriously?? It's a handful of chips & an ice cream with her mum!!

Would you be so judgy about it if she was taking her to an organic cafe & eating the exact same thing? Or serving it up at home?

Lol, the rush to insult anyone who doesn’t give a fortnightly mcds to a 5 yr old who doesn’t even seem to like it particularly/ is always mad on these threads. We have an obesity crisis, and behaviour in schools - well documented that UPF foods are having large negative impacts on brains - is increasingly worse. But sure, the parents who are teaching their kids that there’s treats elsewhere in life other than UPFs, are the bad guys.

Not bad at all smug maybe but not bad !

Haven’t had a Maccies breakfast in ages! Going for a sneaky one now after the school run - mmm breakfast wrap

What Is with people on here it's a treat it's not crack or something 😆

Depends what she eats the rest of the month
if it’s home cooked food and no crisps and biscuits and sweets then it’s fine
if she has beige freezer food and no veg most of the time it’s way less good

The last wimpy I went to was nothing like when I was a child.

Rather than guessing, having been proven wildly inaccurate on your previous assumption, why don’t you actually find out? There is 1.5g of fat in a medium portion of McDonald’s fries. That’s approximately 0.28 teaspoons - just over quarter of a teaspoon. So nowhere near 2 tablespoons. It took longer to type this post than find that out.

But it's only reinforcing the "brain leap" if mum is telling her that the food is the treat rather than the trip with her mum.

And maybe the fries or flurry are are treat for her? Most of my favourite meals are full of veg and good protein and healthy. I think of those as a treat and I consider a whippy from the ice cream van a treat. And a decent steak is a treat and I enjoy a spa day so that's a treat.

If you enjoy it, it's a treat.

I work in a maccies and one family come in 3 times a day/7days a week (or twice a day in school times)

Mum can't be arsed to cook,so it's all they eat,with maybe a bag of sweets in their hands while they eat their nuggets

The fries have their own vat-we do cook veg dippers in them (fish,cheese bites and pies have their own vat)

Twice a month is nothing-its just potatoes and oil (with a bit of salt)

The equivalent in an organic cafe probably won’t be UPF.

Oh no, that is dissapointing.

you can’t see the wood for the trees. The insult is to those who sit on their high horse and insult those that do give a fortnightly McDonald’s. Not to those that simply don’t and let others be. If you act like a high and mighty twit, don’t be shocked when you’re called a high and mighty twit.

Agree.

Dozens of visits per year to McDonald’s isn’t great parenting.

The ops question was ‘do you think it’s ok to take a 5 yr old to mcds every fortnight?’

that is an invitation to answer the question with a yes or a no.

anyone who has answered no and given a reason, or not, has been jumped on and insulted.

should they just have not responded?

Lol.
My kids grew up on maccas.
Youngest has the full deal at least once a week.
I think you'll be fine!

Fwiw I'm not into organic food. But you don't really think the same meal "icecream and chips" would be the same in an organic Cafe or homemade vs. McD's??! As I said earlier food isn't created equal, @CrownCoatsarticulated this far better than me, you won't be able to find half of those ingredients because they are probably only found in a lab. No one ever said it was an issue as an occasional thing, but that it wasn't ideal to do regularly 😒

So firstly, of course they should respond but they don’t need to be rude and call her parenting into question. The fact she is asking means she isn’t a bad parent. The fact that she takes her to McDonald’s twice a month also doesn’t make her a bad parent.

secondly, those that do seem to think it’s as bad as crack, creating a bad relationship with food or causing problems for the future probably do need to have a word with themselves. It simply isn’t and you won’t find a reputable nutritionist that says it. You will find people who don’t have the full knowledge set commenting on it as if they do and creating problems that aren’t there. It’s those people who will have kids with eating disorders or rebelling at the first chance.