Last month I attended a McDonald’s First Taste event in New York City. The event was designed for media and bloggers to be able to sample some new menu items, meet with key McDonald’s representatives, and speak with McDonald’s nutrition manager and chef. We also had the opportunity to speak with a registered dietitian who focuses on nutrition in the Latino community.

While our family is not against fast food and do occasionally eat it, we realize that we need to be careful with our choices and monitor how much and how often we eat fast food. Attending the McDonald’s First Taste event allowed me to learn more about the various choices McDonald’s offers that will make a visit to the restaurant a more balanced visit, food-wise. I also learned about the Bag a McMeal section of the McDonald’s website, where you can choose menu items to create a more-balanced meal and monitor the nutritional information. This is good if you’re wanting to choose lower-calorie or lower-fat options from the McDonald’s menu before heading to your local McDonald’s. It definitely gives you a good perspective on what you may have been eating thus far and how you can choose better options.

I spoke with both Julia Braun, McDonald’s nutrition manager, and Sylvia Melendez-Klinger, an independent registered dietitian who focuses on nutrition in the Hispanic community. Both ladies provided insightful information regarding the McDonald’s menu. Check out the videos below to learn some tips from Sylvia on putting together a meal that meets your calorie needs, plus her take on what the Latino community can do to make healthier eating choices.

Sylvia Melendez-Klinger on Creating a Balanced Meal at McDonald’s

Sylvia Melendez-Klinger on How Latinos Can Eat Healthier

I also took the opportunity to ask Julia Braun about marketing to children at McDonald’s. Hear her response regarding McDonald’s stance on responsible marketing to children.

Julia Braun on Marketing to Children at McDonald’s

A couple of the new menu items we sampled included a mango pineapple smoothie, an Asian salad McDonald’s is bringing back for a limited time, and new sauces for the Chicken McNuggets, including a ranch sauce which will please my daughter who dips pretty much everything into ranch dressing. Of course, McDonald’s wants you to try out some of their new menu items, so they’re offering a giveaway to ModernMami™ readers with a gift card so you can do just that. Remember to also give the Bag a McMeal site a try and see what meal combinations you can come up with. Sylvia provided some tips on how you can even keep your meals around the 500 calorie mark. What 500-600 calorie meals can you create for a better fast food meal choice?

McDonald’s Gift Bag Giveaway

One Three* readers will win a McDonald’s gift bag, which contains the following items:
*Update 6/11/11: I’ve been told by the PR company that I can giveaway three bags instead of just one!

• Tips and recipes from Chef Dan
• Lavender scented eye mask
• Pineapple scented candle
• Mango scented candle
• Notebook with pen
• Bamboo pen
• Balance bracelet
• $25 McDonald’s Arch Card

How to Enter

Required entry: If you’d like to enter this contest, simply leave a comment below telling us which McDonald’s 600-calorie (or less) meal combination you prefer.

Extra entries (optional):

Each of the following will count as 1 extra entry. You’ll need to leave a separate comment for each entry.

1. Follow @modernmami on twitter.
2. Tweet the following: Enter to win a McDonald’s gift bag & gift card from @modernmami! http://bit.ly/lKjQxv #mcdonalds #giveaway #contest
3. Receive post updates by subscribing to our RSS feed. You can do so either via email or through a RSS reader. Leave a comment saying you did so or are already a subscriber.
4. Subscribe on friendfeed and leave a comment with your friendfeed ID.
5. Like ModernMami™.com on Facebook.
6. Write a blog post on your own blog sharing the details of this contest. Be sure to include a link back to this post. Leave a comment with your post link.

All entries must be in by Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:59 pm EST. You must be 18 or older and have a valid U.S. address to enter. Remember to leave a separate comment for each entry. The winners will be chosen using Random.org and will be notified via email. (Please be sure to provide a valid email address with your entry.) Winners will have 48 hours to respond and claim prize, otherwise a new winner will be chosen.

Disclosure: I attended the McDonald’s First Taste event courtesy of VPE PR and McDonald’s. All expenses paid. No compensation received.

Photo credits: McDonald’s

It’s widely known that marketing works on kids. We always talk about how the latest toy commercial really makes an impact on our kids and they then go around asking for said toy. Or how seeing an ad on the street causes them to ask you about the product on the ad.

But, have you ever tried to use marketing as a parenting tool? Think about it. If advertisements and marketing campaigns work on our kids, why not use that to our advantage? Let me give you some examples that have actually happened in our house.

1) My baby girl says she doesn’t know what to do on a relaxing Saturday afternoon. She has tons of toys, books, and the like that she can use to entertain herself, but at the moment seems to have forgotten about them. She even has a play room that she could easily spend hours in, if she only gave it a chance. I say “Go play in the play room,” and she just says, “I don’t know what to play with!” The next time this happens, I instead say “Why don’t you explore your play room and see what you find?” Explore? Well now I’ve just added a challenge and mystical appeal to it! She runs to the room and ends up playing by herself for a while.

Play with words. Make things sound mysterious, magical, and appealing.

2) I want baby girl to try to drink some coconut water, something I grew up drinking, but that’s not so popular in this culture she’s growing up in. I tell her, “Guess what? Mami used to drink this when she was little!” I go on and tell her a story about how we would grab cocos from the palm trees in Puerto Rico, refrigerate them, cut them open once cold, and then stick a straw in them to drink the water. I tell her that daddy did the same in Trinidad as a little boy. And, I tell her that now someone just stuck the water from the coco into a can, but it’s the same.

Hearing this fun story from when mami and daddy were little makes her interested. If we had all that fun drinking agua de coco when we were young, she can’t be left out! So she tries it…and loves it! Plus, she feels like she connected to our youth and is doing “the same” as us.

3) I have a media event to attend, followed by 3 days at a blogging conference. Luckily, my baby girl and husband are coming with, though not actually attending the events and conference. Knowing that we’ll be spending the next 4-5 nights in 3 different hotels, we want to avoid the fact that she’s being thrown off her routine from affecting her mood. So, before we even leave the house, we say to her, “We’re going on an adventure! It’s going to be so much fun and we get to stay in 3 different hotels!!! Isn’t that exciting?” We continue to tell her how one hotel has animals to see, and the other is by the beach. And we ask her, “What do you think the bed will be like? Do you think it’ll have big, fluffy pillows?”

The idea is to get her so excited about our “adventure” that she starts to wonder about it herself and ask questions. She starts to imagine what it will be like and in turn begins to look forward to it. We even tell her, “You and daddy are going to have so much fun while mami is working and learning!” That way, she doesn’t even care that I won’t really be around since I’m attending a conference. Of course, daddy has to deliver and make the trip fun!

It’s all about how you package and “sell” what you’re saying. It’s in the presentation. Just like we are attracted to certain product packaging, food presentation, and concepts in the advertising we see. Much the same, we as parents can use that to our benefit and “sell” concepts to our kids and present them with new ideas.

Marketing to our kids. Try it and see if you can’t get your child excited based on your presentation. If it works for advertisers, it can work for you.

Can you think of a situation where you can “sell” your kids on an idea with some creative marketing?