Kids' Menus In The News

Check it out! The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has just released its report, Kids' Meals: Obesity on the Menu, on the nutritional quality of kids' meals at restaurants like KFC, Burger,and Taco Bell. The results go without saying: kids' meals are not good for kids' health. The press release states that "Besides being almost always too high in calories, 45 percent of the kids' meals at the 13 chains studied by CSPI are too high in saturated and trans fat, and 86 percent are too high in sodium. That’s alarming, according to CSPI, because a quarter of children between the ages of five and ten show early signs of heart disease, such as high LDL (the "bad" cholesterol) or elevated blood pressure." Yikes! But it's not only at chains where kids' meals are not good for kids' health. And we shouldn't only evaluate meals based on calories, fat, sodium, or other nutrients. If nutrients were all we cared about, we might as well load up a Twinkie with vitamins and minerals. Kids, just like adults, need fresh, whole foods that taste like they should. And if its produced in a way that protects the health of our environment, chances are it will help to protect our kids' health too.