McDonald's: We're Not Ditching Ronald

McDonald’s isn’t going to stop marketing to kids anytime soon if CEO Jim Skinner has anything to say about it. At the company’s annual meeting today, Skinner defended the practice and said parents should be able to decide for themselves whether McDonald’s is healthy enough. “This is all really about choice,” he said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Ronald McDonald isn’t going anywhere.”

He "is an ambassador for McDonald's and he is an ambassador for good,” Skinner declared. “He does not advertise unhealthy food to children. McDonald’s does not advertise unhealthy food to children.” Skinner backed up this last assertion by saying that Happy Meals contain low-fat milk and all-white-meat McNuggets. The comments were a response to a newspaper ad run across the country yesterday calling on the company to retire its famous clown. (This Big Mac fanatic is surely happy with the CEO's comments.)