By Mike Fegelman
Chicken fingers and fries $6.99; hamburger and fries $4.50; grilled cheese and fries $4.75; hotdog and fries $4.25; and soft drinks for $1. This is an example of an average children’s menu from a typical family restaurant.
Do you see a problem? Maybe I should equate this in other terms.
Fat, saturated fat, transfats, calories, cholesterol, sodium, caffeine, preservatives, carcinogens, and my personal favorite: “food may or may not contain traces of the following: monosodium glutamate, food colouring, and phosphoric acid.”
It seems that whatever restaurant you go to with your kids, the children’s menus seem to have no healthy choices.
For the most part, kids are left choosing from the four main options as listed above. Choice is therefore an illusion.
This is a real problem. Our kids are growing up thinking that eating these foods on a regular basis is ok, because parents allow this to continue. This must stop.
Society understands that obesity and bad eating habits are a real problem and as such businesses and individuals have changed the way they market and consume food.
Many restaurants now offer healthy-choices menus for adults, advertise low-fat and low-carb foods, and allow substitutions for the regular menu items.
But there are no viable substitutes for kids. How about, fries for a garden salad, or a veggie dog instead of a hotdog, which I must note is made up of assorted meats, which includes anything from guts, entrails, intestines, and any other animal byproducts, but I have a feeling that you’d prefer me not to list the lot of them!
Any nutritionist will tell you that good eating habits start at a young age. That said, how can we allow our kids to eat the foods that we know to be harmful in the long run?
Restaurateurs should alter their menus for the sake of the children. They must forgo the potential margin that they would earn on the low-cost fried foods, in exchange for the more expensive healthier foods. And if this means that the cost will be transferred to the consumer, then this is a reality we must face.
But parents are not off the hook either. They must realize that they have the responsibility to instill good values with regard to proper eating habits.
These bad habits start when parents tell their kids to: “finish what’s on your plate,” which then changed to “eat till you’re full,” and now it apparently is “eat till you’re satisfied.”
The next time you go to a restaurant look at the kid’s menu.
And when you see the lack of selection, talk to your server or, better yet, speak to the manager. Because that’s the only way that anything is ever going to change.