McDonald’s CEO Grilled By Precocious 9-Year-Old Girl [Video]

McDonald’s is on the defensive after their CEO was grilled by a precocious 9-year-old girl who told the fast food giant to stop marketing “tricking” kids into wanting their food.

At Friday’s annual shareholder’s meeting, little Hannah Robertson took to the microphone to tell McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson “It would be nice if you stopped trying to trick kids into wanting to eat your food all the time.”

The plucky little lady was the very first individual to the mic when it was opened for questions.

Robertson traveled from British Columbia with her mother as an official representative of the watchdog group Corporate Accountability International.

“We want them to stop their predatory marketing to kids,”explained one of the group’s organizers. They have also lobbied to get McDonald’s to retire Ronald McDonald as their mascot, because he’s supposedly very resonant with kids these days.

Responding to Robertson’s words, CEO Thompson pointed out that McDonald’s has made recent efforts to provide healthy options for everyone, even kids.

“We sell a lot of fruits and veggies and are trying to sell even more,” he said. He called her “brave” for speaking up, and said that McDonald’s isn’t trying to circumvent parents and market directly to kids.

“We are not the cause of obesity,” Thompson said. “We are not marketing unjustly to kids…. . Ronald is not a bad guy. He’s about fun. He’s a clown. I’d urge you to all let your kids have fun, too.”

In a later interview, Robertson said that she wasn’t impressed with Thompson’s answer.

“I don’t think he answered it very well, because he just kept saying the same things over and over again like, ‘We don’t market to kids and we don’t sell junk food,'” Robertson said.

While her story has garnered praise from many publications, it has also received a fair amount of criticism from those who believe Hannah may have been used as puppet for the agenda of her mother’s political group.

But deciding whether or not Hannah Robertson is for real is a task we leave up to you. Check out the audio of McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson being grilled by a 9-year-old below and decide for yourself:

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