The Lesson of a McDonald’s Drink
The other day, sitting with my daughter at McDonald’s, she sipped her drink and said something that caught me: “This one isn’t too sugary. It’s not too bad.” It was an innocent remark, but it made me think. Children approach the world with fresh eyes. They take things as they come. If something doesn’t taste like poison, it must be alright.
But behind that cup, behind the glossy red and yellow arches, lies one of the sharpest machines of greed in modern history. McDonald’s is not about food, not really. It is about manipulation, scale, and profit. From the toys slipped into children’s meals to the addictive balance of salt, sugar, and fat — it is not a restaurant, but an engine that turns innocence into revenue.
This is what disturbs me: children learn ethics in school, where life is presented like a clean storybook.
They are told about honesty, fairness, kindness, justice — as if the world were built on those principles. But then they step outside and meet places like McDonald’s, or apps like TikTok, or products built to break and be replaced. Here, the lessons are inverted: manipulation wins, the surface hides the truth, and the weak are not protected but targeted.
How do you raise a child between these two worlds? If you only teach the classroom ideals, she will walk into life unprepared, and be chewed up. If you only show the corruption, she will grow cynical, and stop believing in anything at all.
The task, I think, is to teach both. To say: Yes, this world is full of tricks, greed, and false promises. But that doesn’t erase what’s good. It only means you must keep your eyes open, and decide consciously how you want to live.
When my daughter said her McDonald’s drink was “not too bad,” she was already making a small judgment, weighing one thing against another. That is where it begins — not in rejecting the world entirely, but in learning to see through it. To know that what is sold as harmless may not be harmless. To know that every smile in an advertisement has a bill behind it. To learn that ethics are not given — they are chosen.
And maybe that’s the real lesson. Not that we can build a world without greed or manipulation — history proves otherwise. But that each of us can walk through it awake, choosing not to be fooled, and choosing not to become what we despise.