As I have mentioned before, urbanmoms.ca is the Official Mom Media for the exciting Moms Quality Correspondents program from McDonald’s. Tonight I will be going to meet all of the moms before their first field trip to McDonald’s Corporate Head Office in Chicago.
I’ll post about those two events later but, for now, I wanted to introduce you to the women from across Canada who will be representing all of us moms. They’ll be posing the tough questions and getting to the bottom of what things are like behind the scenes at this global giant. Oh, so send me your questions and I’ll get them to find the answers! Either by email or in the comments below.
So, without further ado, here are your Mom Quality Correspondents (MQC):
Naomi Jesson – Surrey, BC
Bio:
Married
– Son, 3 years old – loves to dance, play with trains and hockey who is also learning to read
– Daughter, just turned 1 and already “getting into everything”
– Started Moms group in local community that has an internet forum component – strong believer in support from fellow moms
– Founded (with others) the Valley Vixens – running group for moms who want to get in shape and have so far completed 3 half marathons
– Loves to wakeboard in her free time
Wanted to become an MQC to become more informed and learn about healthy choices
Laura Day – Halifax, NS
Bio:
– Son, 13 who loves the outdoors and reading
– Daughter, 10 loves to play the drums
– Alumni member of the Arthritis Society – diagnosed with Fibromyalgia at 23
Entire family loves heading to the beach – rain or shine, no phones allowed
Wanted to become an MQC to learn about McDonald’s concerns for the well-being of young people and is curious to see what steps are being taken to ensure quality
Corinne Payne – Montreal, QC
Bio:
Married
– Daughter, 10 loves soccer, computers art and is a karate black belt
Son, 4 loves to run, bike skateboard and rollerblade
– Member of the School Governing Board, Vice-President of the Parent Committee
– Corinne is an ESL teacher in Montreal
Wanted to become an MQC so that she can share her thoughts, learn about the quality of food at McDonald’s as well as learn more about standards system-wide
Alicia Martell – Thornhill, ON (YES! Our very own Ali from Juice!)
Bio:
Married
– 3 children, (2 girls, 1 boy) who love dance, swimming, hockey, drama and soccer
Ali runs her own parenting blog – Cheaper than Therapy and is a regular entertainment blogger on urbanmoms.ca
Wanted to become an MQC to see the “myths” about McDonald’s shut down and so that she can have a smart answer to give other moms when they tell her she shouldn’t take her kids to McDonald’s
Kathy Hryciuk – Winnipeg, MB
Bio:
4 kids
– Son, 19 in College for Culinary Arts, Son 16 who is artsy and In grade 12, Daughter 15 who has a scholarship to Hockey School in Kelowna and Daughter 10 who loves hip-hop and is very social
– “Gatorade Trainer” for her kids hockey teams and volunteers a great deal with her kids’ schools
Kathy is a fitness and nutrition “addict” and loves sharing this knowledge with others – ran first half marathon and loved it
Wanted to become an MQC so that she can see where McDonald’s is headed for the future and help dispel the rumours about the brand
Good read. I saved the page for future visit.
My goodness, I haven’t checked this part of the site out and deeply apologize for our “loss of words”. I’m just learning about this blogging stuff. Anyway, we’re headed to Frederikton, NB for a potato harvest and to meet with McCains. I will be sure to bring up your concerns to both McCain’s and McDonald’s. Thanks for the great questions. I’ll for sure keep you posted. Kath (Wpg).
Last weekend, we attended the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, and visited the McDonalds Canada booth.
During a demonstration of the online “Nutrition calculator”, we as well as the booth attendants, were surprised to find out that despite McDonalds’ “Trans-fat free” claim, the oil their fries are cooked in contains hydrogenated soybean oil with THBQ. Industrial partial hydrogenation of plant oils, in this case soybean oil, produces trans fats.
Also surprising was an ingredient in the fries (yes fries, not oil) labelled: dimethylpolysiloxane (antifoaming agent). Why would McDonalds’ fries be susceptible to “foaming” in the first place?
Using the Breakfast BLT Bagel as another example in the demo, we found propylene glycol as a “MAY CONTAIN…” ingredient in the bagel. Propylene glycol is used in car antifreeze, deodorant sticks, and cryonics (the low-temperature preservation of humans and animal tissue).
A question to the McDonald’s moms: would you feed the above to your children?
The same question was posed to the attendants who interestingly said they would not. They also said that they were not employees of McDonalds Canada but rather employees of a public relations firm retained by McDonalds Canada.
What an impressive group of women! I’m excited to hear about this project – i do love the occasional trip to Mcdonald’s with my kids, and it would be great to understand more about the food and it’s nutritional qualities.
Sounds like a great team. I can’t wait to hear more. My question comes from being a vegetarian who loves the fries but is usually stuck on what else to order. Are they looking into more vegetarian options as even the salads are mostly meet and not too exciting on the vegetarian front.
Sounds like an interesting task!
Your post prompted me to go to the McD’s website to check out if they had any nutritional info before asking any here. I always assumed their food was loaded with trans fat so I was surprised to see that they have a nutritional calculator and that their fries only have 0.3 grms of trans fat — just about the same as a reasonably sized piece of cheddar cheese. Hmm. My question is: would they ever consider procuring organic ingredients?