Published 12 October 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4174
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4174

News

Public health doctors angry over McDonald’s tutoring programme for students

Melissa Sweet

1 Sydney

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

An online maths tutoring programme for Australian secondary school students sponsored by the fast food chain McDonald’s has been attacked by public health experts as "a disgraceful exercise in advertising junk food."

McDonald’s recently released figures showing that more than one third of Australia’s 1.46 million secondary students have signed up to the free programme (http://mathsonline.com.au), which carries the company’s logo and says "proudly provided by your local McDonald’s restaurant."

Mike Daube, president of the Public Health Association Australia, said that the sponsorship is "an outrageous means of promoting junk food directly to children."

"McDonald’s are superb marketers, who are only in this for one reason—to sell more energy dense, nutrient poor foods," he told the BMJ.

"Their promotion to kids is shameless at a time when concern about obesity is on the rise. This is a disgraceful exercise in advertising junk food and justifies yet again . . . [Full text of this article]


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Rapid Responses:

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