As part of Freya’s current food project at school, some of the children have assembled a McDonald’s pastiche which was displayed on the wall in the play/dining area. Jo alerted me to this, so I took a proper look for myself. True enough, there were a couple of pictures of the children standing outside a local “restaurant”, along with some paper-art burgers and, most worrying of all, french-fry boxes on which the children’s names were written as “McAlice” and so on.

I mentioned to one of the educators that I thought this was not something I wish my daughter to see every day, and I was greeted with mild empathy and excuses for the display. I then wrote an open letter to the school, explaining that we have no problem with junk-food being discussed, but for it to be given a face in the form of a brand-name was tantamount to free advertising.

The offending posters have been taken down, and I await further comments to arise from my letter being discussed in a future teacher meeting. It is a testament to McDonald’s marketing that no-one in the nursery school found this synonymity concerning; one of the first comments I received was “if it makes you feel better there are pictures of vegetables on the walls, too”. It doesn’t, since there is no company called “Vegetable”; I would be equally anxious if pictures of Nike products were used in a clothes project.

Sadly, when I was in the dining area of my school the next day, I saw a similar pastiche about food in Arabic. Amongst the vegetables and fruit loomed two french-fry cartons. Thankfully, they were almost indistinguishable, and were hidden by the other foodstuffs and the hugeness of the dining room itself, something which cannot be achieved in Freya’s school.