The city of San Francisco doesn’t want children to get a toy with their meal at a fast food restaurant if they want french fries. However the city would allow them to get a toy if they eat something healthy (within their nutritional guidelines).

This could be just the right thing to save children from a lifetime of diabetes and heart disease, at least in theory. Or this could yet another example of regulators with a lack of marketing knowledge. It just might take the marketing people at McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast food chains at least 15 minutes here or there to come up with marketing ideas to get around the problem.

There are likely to be many problems with this law and even more ways around it. This is sounding a lot like many ethics rules for lawyer advertising.