Docs Not Clowning Around: Ronald McDonald Must Go

CHICAGOIn an attempt to curb childhood obesity, the non-profit watchdog group Corporate Accountability International, along with more than U.S. 550 health professionals and institutions, are asking McDonald's Corp.'s  to stop marketing fast food to kids and retire Ronald McDonald as its corporate mascot.

The group placed full-page ads in the Chicago Sun-Times, New York Metro, Boston Metro, San Francisco Examiner, Minneapolis City Pages and Baltimore City newspapers, and sent an open letter to McDonalds CEO Jim Skinner.

Excerpts from the ads and open letter included: As health professionals engaged directly in the largest preventable health crisis facing this country, we ask that you stop marketing junk food to children. The rates of sick children are staggering. We ask that you heed our concern and retire your marketing promotions for food high in salt, fat, sugar, and calories to children, whatever form they takefrom Ronald McDonald to toy giveaways."

The letter comes just weeks after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed new guidelines on food marketing to kids, seeking new limits on food ads that target children, and a day before McDonalds shareholders will vote on a proposal from the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia asking it to issue a report assessing its response to "public concerns regarding linkages of fast food to childhood obesity."

A Yale-Rudd Center study recently found kids' exposure to fast-food marketing has increased, in particular to McDonald's ads. In 2009, small children were exposed to up to 25 percent more of the industry leader's ads then they were in 2007.