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

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

Cracker Barrel's three-ounce portion of grilled chicken tenderloins has only 110 calories and one gram of bad (saturated-plus-trans) fat. While the tenderloins look small, it's the serving that nutritionists say children (or adults, for that matter) should be eating.

Whether kids end up with a healthy meal depends on which of the chain's 15 side dishes they add and how much of the free corn bread or biscuits they scarf down. The vegetables--like baby carrots, corn, and green beans--add fewer calories, less harmful fat, and more nutrients than the steak fries, hashbrown casserole, or "dumplins," to name a few. Get the chicken with carrots and a (free) glass of OJ instead of a Coke and your kid ends up with a healthy 320-calorie meal.

Grilled chicken is on virtually every adult menu. Why do so few restaurants bother to offer it to children?

Spaghetti & Tomato Sauce (Olive Garden)

Spaghetti showed up oil roughly half of the kids' menus we surveyed. The 310-calorie entree is low in saturated-plus-trans fat, and the tomato sauce counts as a vegetable.

At least at Olive Garden, young spaghetti eaters get to share some of the grown-ups' garden salad. Oust don't let them share too many 140-calorie garlic bread sticks.) At many chains--Applebee's, Outback, Ruby Tuesday, and T.G.I. Friday's, for example--the only side dish on the kids' menu is fries.

Popcorn Shrimp (Red Lobster)

Red Lobster deserves a pat on the tail for overhauling its children's menu. But what happens to kids who stick with that old favorite, Popcorn Shrimp? A third of a day's bad fat and 620 milligrams of sodium, that's what. Shrimp starts out low in fat, but popcorn shrimp is more breading than seafood. The batter sops up more than two grams of saturated fat and three grams of trans fat in the deep-fat fryer.

And that doesn't include the french fries that come along for the ride. Red Lobster's fries are among the worst we found. Each one-cup serving adds nine grams of artery-clogging fat--about as much as a medium fries at Burger King. Total damage for the Popcorn Shrimp plus fries (but not the free appetizer or Cheddar Bay Biscuits): 430 calories, 1,310 mg of sodium, and 14 grams of bad fat (three grams shy of a day's worth).

Macaroni & Cheese (Chili's)

Chili's No Baloney Macaroni 'n Cheese looks exactly like Kraft's. It delivers six grams of saturated-plus-trans fat, the same as five Burger King Chicken Tenders. But the Mac 'n Cheese has about twice the calories (420) and sodium (910 mg).

The only good news: at most chains, the dish comes without fries. But who needs 400 calories' worth of white flour, margarine, cheese, and salt?

Ribs (Chili's)

Ribs aren't as bad as they sound, because the typical half-rack on the kids' menu has only about 3 1/2 ounces of meat on the bone. But that doesn't make them a bargain. While they've got nowhere near the 21 grams of saturated-plus-trans fat of an adult portion, their seven grams are 40 percent of a day's limit for children.

Worse yet, the ribs come surrounded by fries. At Chili's, that doubles the bad fat (to 13 grams) and the calories (to 630). That's like getting a McDonald's Happy Meal with a Quarter Pounder instead of a Hamburger.