What do you do with a problem like McDonald's?

The boys currently have a McDonald's obsession and like all their food obsessions that means they’ll refuse to eat anything else for the next few weeks. It used to bother me but every six months or so the obsession will be broccoli so I figure they get a balanced enough diet if you average out over the year. And it’s not as if obesity is a problem with them.

What is annoying isn’t the food but the new trend to gender specify the free toy that comes with the Happy Meal. If you say it’s for a boy you get a crappy plastic motorcycle rider, for a girl some proto-barbie with her own beach hammock. And I know, I know better than to expect anything different from big corporate corporations responding to consumer demand but it still kind of rankles that it can be so blatant. Although I suspect not many parents have issues about girls playing with ‘male’ toys in time honoured tomboy fashion. It’s boys messing around with girl stuff that still makes people uncomfortable.

And on a related (but not really) topic a neat article in this weeks Nature about sex determination in fire ants.