The IOC: Medaling in Mixed Messages

So I’ve been watching the Vancouver Olympics on and off (you’re almost forced to watch because there’s no new programming on any other station), and I was surprised to learn from several ads that McDonald’s is the event’s Official Restaurant.  In fact, this is the company’s 8th straight time to have this role at The Games.  The McDonald’s corporate website has a large section dedicated to their involvement in the games, including the three new restaurants they had to build in the Vancouver and Olympic Village areas in order to “serve our fresh, quality food to the thousands of athletes, media and fans”.

Now maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t this seem like a strange partnership?  On one side you’ve got athletes in peak condition who have probably been on restricted diets since they were kids.  On the other side you’ve got got a worldwide purveyor of nutritionally-deficient fast food that pushes its customers to eat an unhealthy amount of calories (even if you’re only eating there once a day).  While it’s understandable that Olympic athletes might enjoy the occasional greasy burger or salty fries, I find it difficult to believe that they eat at McDonalds on a regular basis – if that was the case, they probably wouldn’t have been able to earn a spot on their nation’s Olympic team.

So what does it say about the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that they gladly take money from McDonald’s every two years in exchange for selling-out their ideals?  I mean, isn’t the Olympics about honoring the best that humans can be when it comes to health and fitness?  Olympic athletes are supposed to be role models for kids – I can’t even begin to count the number of news stories I’ve seen or heard about how this year’s competitors are inspiring the next generation of Olympians.  Yet at the same time, kids who are watching the Olympics on television are also being told that they should eat McDonald’s food – not only for all the normal reasons the company offers up, but also because their new-found heroes eat it, too!  To make things even worse, McDonald’s runs a kids program that, according to their website, “gives children from around the world a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience the Games firsthand,” including “attending Olympic Winter Games events, meeting athletes, visiting the Olympic Village, Vancouver, touring cultural sites, and more.”  If that kind of VIP treatment doesn’t turn kids into Big Mac eating zombies for life, I don’t know what would.

Yet once the games are over and the news ceases to be just another promotional vehicle for NBC’s coverage, there will be stories (like there always are) about how more and more Americans are overweight, especially children.  Then there will be lots of pundits debating the merits of legislation that would tax sugary sodas or otherwise discourage the consumption of unhealthy food.  How dare the government ask us to eat less fattening food – the Olympic athletes eat fast food and look how healthy they are!

It would be great if some of the Olympic athletes told kids that achieving the height of fitness is really hard work, and that you can’t expect to compete in the Olympics if you don’t watch what you eat.  But I bet they had to sign an agreement before getting to The Games, promising they wouldn’t disparage any of the event’s sponsors either on-camera or off.  Because after all, it just wouldn’t be right to put something as important as children’s health above the IOC’s profit.