Kids' cuisine: "what would you like with your fries?" - Eating Out

Nutrition Action Healthletter, March, 2004 by Jayne Hurley, Bonnie Liebman

The adults' menu may feature grilled shrimp, charbroiled chicken, sauteed vegetables, and salads galore. But the kids' menu rarely ventures beyond cheeseburgers, pizza, fried chicken fingers, and french fries.

Most restaurants assume that kids don't eat anything else. And--after a steady diet of fast food (even in school cafeterias)--many kids won't. Do any restaurants offer decent kids' foods?

Obesity rates in children have since 1980. While no one cause, the restaurant industry's view that kids' food means fast food hasn't helped.

Granted, some children are picky eaters. But the more-adventurous youngsters would move beyond fried potatoes and chicken fingers, greasy cheeseburgers, and fatty pizza if they were exposed to healthier foods at an early age. Worldwide, children dig into bowls of beans (Latin America), chickpeas (the Middle East), and vegetables (Asia).

U.S. restaurants serve fingers, burgers, and fries because they're the lowest common denominator, they're familiar, and they're cheap. Cheap for the restaurant, that is. The cost to children who face a greater risk of obesity, diabetes, and (eventually) heart disease and cancer doesn't show up on the menu (nor do calories, sodium, or damaging fat).

Maybe restaurateurs don't know that arteries start to show early signs of heart disease in the second decade of life. Maybe they don't know that children aged two and older need to cut back on saturated and trans fat. Maybe they figure that kids can eat unlimited quantities of fatty, salty, sugary, high-calorie foods and "burn it off."

Maybe it's time they realized that as long as they're feeding children a steady diet of fattening feed, their family-friendly reputations aren't worth the crayons and color-your-own placemats they hand out at the door.

Fries & Free Refills

What are the top 20 table-service restaurants feeding our children? Late last year, we found fried chicken (fingers or nuggets) on every one of their kids' menus, a hamburger or cheeseburger on 85 percent, and french fries on all but one (it had hash browns).

In fact, at almost half the chains, fries were the only side g dish on the kids' menu. Most chains allow you to substitute a (hopefully better) side dish for the fries if you ask--but only nine of the 20 menus offered. (For a list of the chains we surveyed, see "The Chain Gang," p. 15.)

Extras make it worse. Kids' meals often come with free (fatty) biscuits or corn bread and a complimentary dessert or beverage. (Why drink water when you can have a free Coke or Pepsi?) At most chains, younger patrons can choose from soda, juice, or milk (typically 2% fat, but it varies from restaurant to restaurant). Half the chains we looked at offer free refills, but only for soda.

A handful of restaurants are starting to change. Like fast-food chains, they may be worried about lawsuits. (McDonald's and Wendy's are test-marketing kids' meals with milk or juice and fruit instead of a soda and fries.)

Or maybe the table-service chains sense a new market. "Young people today have increasingly sophisticated palates," Red Lobster executive chef Keith Keogh told the trade publication Restaurant Business in December, when the chain unveiled its new kids' menu.

Young Red Lobster patrons now get a free appetizer of applesauce or fresh carrot sticks and cucumbers with a ranch dipping sauce. And the new entrees--which include Snow Crab Legs, Grilled Mahi-Mahi, and Grilled Chicken--come with steamed vegetables. Gone are the fried shrimp, hamburgers, and cheesesticks, though popcorn shrimp and fried chicken fingers--which both come with french fries--are still on the menu.

To find out what's on kids' menus, we sent dishes from seven of the 20 table-service chains we surveyed to an independent laboratory. We chose one or two chains to represent each dish. They're listed in italics following its name. (Unfortunately, the new Red Lobster dishes weren't yet available.)

To estimate how much of a day's worth of calories (or other nutrients) kids' meals supply, we assumed that children should be eating 1,500 calories a day. That's the U.S. Department of Agriculture's suggested calorie intake for "low-active" children aged four to eight. A 1,500-calorie diet has room for only 17 grams a day of harmful (saturated-plus-trans) fat. Both numbers are higher for older or active kids and lower for sedentary kids.

Here, from least to most saturated-plus-trans fat, are the foods we sent to the lab. (Not that bad fats are the sole criteria for judging a healthy meal. A low-fat dinner of white bread and non-whole-grain pasta isn't exactly ideal.)

One look at the numbers and it's easy to see why most kids swallow nearly twice as many calories at a restaurant as they do when they eat at home.

Grilled Chicken Tenderloins (Cracker Barrel)

Cracker Barrel, with more than 400 units around the country (though mostly in the South), features homestyle cooking. It's one of the few restaurants that offer a decent selection of vegetable side dishes. And, like Macaroni Grill and Red Lobster, it's one of the few that give kids a choice of fried or grilled chicken.