Chain restaurants promise healthier kids’ menus Health Tips

Chain restaurants promise healthier kids’ menus

Parents seeking healthier restaurant meals for their kids can start to look beyond chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese.

A score of restaurant chains including Burger King, Chilis and IHOP say they will include healthier options on their childrens menus.

That means that at least 15,000 restaurant locations across the country will focus on increasing servings of fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, whole grains and low-fat dairy and reducing fats, sugars and sodium, the National Restaurant Association announced Wednesday.

Less healthy foods like burgers and fries will still be on the menu, but the restaurants say they will do more to promote healthier options. Chilis, for example, will highlight a chicken sandwich with a side of pineapple or mandarin oranges on its kids menu.

Burger King recently reformulated childrens chicken nuggets to include less sodium, and employees taking orders will ask if customers want apple fries fresh apple slices cut to look like French fries instead of the standard fries with that?

To be part of the program, restaurants must include at least one kids menu item that is 600 calories or less, a side dish with fewer than 200 calories and meet other nutritional requirements.

This could provide a great push toward healthier offerings at restaurants, said Robert Post, the Agriculture Department official in charge of developing the USDAs dietary guidelines.

Chain restaurants signing up for the initiative are Au Bon Pain, Bonefish Grill, Burger King, Burgerville, Carrabbas Italian Grill, Chevys, Chilis, Corner Bakery Cafe, Cracker Barrel, Dennys, El Pollo Loco, Friendlys, IHOP, Joes Crab Shack, Outback Steakhouse, Silver Diner, Sizzler, T-Bones Great American Eatery and zpizza.

Patrick Lenow of IHOP said the restaurant will add two new childrens menu items, pancakes with fruit and scrambled eggs with fruit. The company had already limited everything on its childrens menu to fewer than 600 calories and made fruit a default side instead of fries a change that has dramatically increased fruit consumption at the restaurants, Lenow said.

Dawn Sweeney, president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association, said the group is hoping to add additional restaurants to the effort. McDonalds, the worlds largest burger chain, is among those that havent committed yet.

Many restaurant companies have begun reformulating menu items and adding healthier selections as consumers have shown more interest in nutrition.

Where before we may have been concerned about not having French fries pictured on our menu, were now finding that has actually helped our business, said John Dillon of Dennys, which recently dropped the fries photos.

Margo Wootan of the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest says the effort is a good first step, but that restaurants need to do more.

Its not enough to have one healthy option in a minefield of high calories, high fat and high salt, Wooten said.

She says the best ways for restaurants to make a difference is to make a healthy side dish a default, as IHOP has with fruit, and to suggest healthier options to diners at the order point, as Burger King has with its apple fries.

The federal government will also soon require restaurants and other food outlets with 20 or more locations to post calories on their menus.

Virtual Health Center