McDonald's says it will continue to offer a lunchtime delivery service to Hong Kong schools and argues the root cause of childhood obesity is not hamburgers but computer games and lack of exercise.
Speaking for the first time on the controversy, Joseph Lau, managing director of McDonald's Hong Kong, said childhood obesity 'concerns me a great deal'. However he insisted: 'Attacking McDonald's for delivering to schools isn't going to solve the problem.'
The South China Morning Post has published a stream of readers' letters over the past three weeks both criticising and supporting McDonald's after the newspaper reported that parent-teacher groups were concerned over the school deliveries.
'Every parent is concerned about the health of their children but let's go back to the root cause of it,' Mr Lau argued. 'People are less active because they spend more time with computers, video games and on the internet.
'When we were young, we didn't have those gadgets. We went out and played basketball and went roller skating.
'Today children don't do that because they roller skate and play basketball in video games.
