Tell LeBron James to #SlamJunk

Tell LeBron James to #SlamJunk

Fabulously wealthy NBA basketball players have been especially quick to take McDonald’s lucre in return for shilling for junk food their teams would never let them eat.

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

Fast food corporations like McDonald’s have virtually mastered the use of childrens’ role models to convince kids that junk food is cool. Fabulously wealthy NBA basketball players have been especially quick to take McDonald’s lucre in return for shilling for food their teams would never let them eat. (Perhaps that’s why the current commercial featuring LeBron James hawking a “Bacon Clubhouse Sandwich” never actually shows him taking a bite.)

James, the NBA’s reigning Most Valuable Player, receives millions of dollars annually from McDonald’s in return for helping hook young people—kids who seriously admire him—on greasy, fatty, unhealthy foods. This insidious marketing isn’t new. James is following in the unholy footsteps of former NBA greats Michael Jordan and Larry Bird in contributing to the global epidemic of food-related health problems.

Food activist Anna Lappé, founder of Food MythBusters, recently wrote about the tactics used by the fast-food industry—including McDonald’s—to build brand awareness among their youngest customers. And while she argues that parents need to set their own nutritional boundaries with their children, “the ways the food industry now targets kids are so pervasive and the tactics so deceitful that even the most diligent parent cannot prevent their kids from being inundated at the most impressionable stages in their development.”

Fortunately, kids like 9-year-old Hannah Robertson, who scolded McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson at last year’s shareholders’ meeting, are starting to call out celebs for their shameless shilling and demanding that their role models instead promote healthy food. In this video released today and produced by Corporate Accountability International, Hannah and her friends explain how you can help, including adding your name to this petition imploring James to drop his McDonald’s sponsorship.

 

Disobey authoritarians, support The Nation

Over the past year you’ve read Nation writers like Elie Mystal, Kaveh Akbar, John Nichols, Joan Walsh, Bryce Covert, Dave Zirin, Jeet Heer, Michael T. Klare, Katha Pollitt, Amy Littlefield, Gregg Gonsalves, and Sasha Abramsky take on the Trump family’s corruption, set the record straight about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s catastrophic Make America Healthy Again movement, survey the fallout and human cost of the DOGE wrecking ball, anticipate the Supreme Court’s dangerous antidemocratic rulings, and amplify successful tactics of resistance on the streets and in Congress.

We publish these stories because when members of our communities are being abducted, household debt is climbing, and AI data centers are causing water and electricity shortages, we have a duty as journalists to do all we can to inform the public.

In 2026, our aim is to do more than ever before—but we need your support to make that happen. 

Through December 31, a generous donor will match all donations up to $75,000. That means that your contribution will be doubled, dollar for dollar. If we hit the full match, we’ll be starting 2026 with $150,000 to invest in the stories that impact real people’s lives—the kinds of stories that billionaire-owned, corporate-backed outlets aren’t covering. 

With your support, our team will publish major stories that the president and his allies won’t want you to read. We’ll cover the emerging military-tech industrial complex and matters of war, peace, and surveillance, as well as the affordability crisis, hunger, housing, healthcare, the environment, attacks on reproductive rights, and much more. At the same time, we’ll imagine alternatives to Trumpian rule and uplift efforts to create a better world, here and now. 

While your gift has twice the impact, I’m asking you to support The Nation with a donation today. You’ll empower the journalists, editors, and fact-checkers best equipped to hold this authoritarian administration to account. 

I hope you won’t miss this moment—donate to The Nation today.

Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel 

Editor and publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x