Children's menu makes you fat

Main Category: Nutrition / Diet
Article Date: 25 Feb 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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If you do not want your child to get fatter, keep him/her away from the kid's menu, says a consumer report.

As restaurants try to cater for the changing needs of health conscious adults, most of them have completely ignored the child. This is according to a report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (USA).

Go to most restaurants today and you will see children's menus loaded with fast carbohydrates, saturated fats and additives.

In this report 20 chains of restaurants were examined. The researchers took meals from seven of them to an independent laboratory. They asked the laboratory to test the meals for their nutritional content.

Dishes that contained fries had over 65% of a child's recommended daily intake of fats.

Jane Hurley, co-author of the report said "Kids' menus have just been fast food for years and years. It's cheap for the restaurants, but the cost for kids is measured in obesity and related diseases."

Some chains responded by saying that parents can, if they want, change items on the menu. One said that the fries could be replaced with broccoli.

I was in the USA last year and was surprised by the amount of fast carbohydrates in the children's menus. So called 'healthy options' consisted mostly of carbohydrates, and high GI (glycemic index) ones at that. I live in the UK.

In the USA my children had the choice of 'healthy' meals with lots of fast carbs, or plain junk foods. When going to France, on the other hand, children just eat what the adults do. If there are French fries on the dish, the portion is quite small, there are always plenty of vegetables and fruit for desert. Basically, the French meals are balanced with the right proportions of protein, carbohydrates and fats.

The UK and USA are obsessed with the amount of fats in their foods. The continental European focus on the balance of protein, vegetables, salad and fruit. The USA/UK think that if you do not eat fat you are OK. It is not the fats that cause insulin to rocket, it is loading yourself with carbohydrates. It is not fat itself that is bad, it is saturated fat that is bad.

I took my son (he is 10) and a friend to the zoo the other day here in England. The healthy option in the kids' meal was 'maccaroni cheese' with banana for desert. The portion was massive, the cheese was obviously super processed and had very little protein. Basically, had my son and his friend opted for the 'healthy menu he would have had a 80% carbohydrate meal. The ideal should be 40% carbs (slow release), 30% protein and 30% fat (monounsaturated).

When we were last in France I remember my son opting for fish soup, a cesar's salad and some plums. The soup was delicious with plenty of fish in it, the salad plentiful with lots of olive oil and the plums were sweet and fresh. That meal had plenty of fat, but it was olive oil (unsaturated). He had plenty of fiber (fibre) and a good dose of protein. He asked for mineral water to drink.

I asked him why he opted for the mineral water, not his usual fizzy lemonade. 'Everyone has water here,' he answered.

So what should we concentrate on? Cutting out fat or balancing the meal?

Written by Christian Nordqvist, Editor of Medical News Today.