It isn't often that a food company tells its customers that it should eat less of its food. But that is what McDonald's appears to have done in France.

In an ''advertorial'' about obesity in children that appeared in the magazine Femme Actuelle in May, McDonald's France said the number of visits to its outlets should be limited. Forbidding children from eating fast food would be counterproductive, it said. ''However, there is no reason to eat excessive amounts of junk food, nor go more than once a week to McDonald's.''

A spokesman for McDonald's in the United States said the company did not agree with the views expressed in the advertorial.

''This is the opinion of one consultant in France,'' the company said in a statement. ''We do not share this view at all.''