Childrens' menus: It Doesn't have to be chips with everything!

Nothing is certain but death and taxes. And chicken nuggets on children's menus. For a nation glittering with awards for the quality of its restaurants, there's a decided lack of sparkle when it comes to bills of fare for junior. 

Breadcrumbed bits, burgers, pasta, pizza, macaroni cheese and bangers all dominate – it's groundhog day out there and now, researchers from the University of Edinburgh have found that kids who eat the same food as adults are healthier. So isn't it time to wave bye-byes to cartes for kiddies?

The Scottish study chimes with research by the US Centre for Science in the Public Interest (pdf), which discovered that obesity is being dished up at most restaurant chains, with 97% failing to meet expert nutrition standards for children's meals. So what are kids being offered in the UK?

I spend many a pleasant hour drooling over restaurant menus but, picking through the children's offerings of British food chains, I felt my taste buds starting to wither.

What a dull old landscape it is in kid-food land: processed nuggets and fish fingers, mini burgers and pizzas, pasta with vapid sauces, chips and lots of carrot sticks plonked on the side as a nod to healthy eating.

Most of it falls into the category of what food writer Joanna Blythman describes as the "ghetto" of mass-produced, highly refined, additive-filled "children's food".

There are some exceptions. My kids like Wagamama's options (pdf) (vaguely adventurous noodles, ramen and curry) and Nando's (for spicy grilled chicken or vegetables and a good selection of veggie sides).

But overall they find kids' menus an unappetising let-down and in many cases, the food is more than simply disappointing.

Most restaurants don't provide nutritional information about their children's meals but some do – and it's an eye-opener.

Chicken nuggets, chips and beans at Wetherspoons ,for example, contains a whopping 700 calories (almost 40% of a child's recommended daily calorie intake and 80% of their guideline daily amount (GDA) of salt.

Sadly, uninspiring kids' menus are not just the preserve of mass-market chains.

While mum and dad feast on delicious roasts and braises at Gordon Ramsay's Savoy Grill, kids are offered this barely legible little selection (pdf).

Jamie must have been at a low ebb when the kids' selection on his menu was devised for Jamie's Italian.

Or how about beans on toast at this luxe country house hotel (pdf) (£6.50, no less). If chefs want to offer kids their own bill of fare, surely they can do better than this?

As a parent, I'm familiar with the warm embrace of the kids' menu: a safe and less expensive option, smaller portions.

At the same time, I worry that these menus of dumbed-down food enable picky eating habits and discourage children from trying wonderful new tastes.

Do kids' menus have to be the culinary equivalent of painting a room magnolia?

Henry Dimbleby

Henry Dimbleby, who runs the healthy fast-food chain Leon and was appointed by the government to review school meals, believes there is a place for children's menus but says pint-sized diners deserve better.

"All of our research shows that children love having their own menu," he says.

"It is a really good opportunity for restaurants to do something imaginative and entertaining. It doesn't have to be too out there, but they deserve better than a culinary desert of chicken nuggets."

But food blogger and parenting author Liat Hughes Joshi says restaurants need to fundamentally rethink their approach.

Liat Hughes Joshi

"I despair at the lack of imagination in kids' menus in many restaurants," she says. "When we're tucking into a fabulous piece of fish and my son's getting nuggets, his heart sinks and I don't blame him."

She's started a No More Nuggets lobby to encourage restaurants to overhaul their children's menus, while the Scottish Soil Association, in partnership with Organix babyfood, has launched the Out To Lunch campaign and a national survey.

"Some restaurants are doing positive things to improve children's menus but there's still a long way to go," says the Soil Association's Amy Leech.

"We're not just looking to see healthier food, we want to see more choices so children don't just get everything with chips."

In Italy, children's menus are virtually non-existent and chefs will cheerfully prepare tasty dishes that individual bambini diners like.

Some restaurants in the UK – notably the better ones that cook fresh food from scratch – do this too, offering half-size portions and flexibility in the kitchen. I reckon we've outgrown the kiddie menus. Another course please!

Children's Sugar Consumption Too High

U.S. children and teens are getting too much sugar in their diets, mostly from processed and prepared foods, according to a new study.

Sugar consumption decreased since 1999, although added sugars make up 16 percent of youth diets and contribute to the ongoing problem of childhood obesity.

Researchers followed 7,100 children and teens between 1999 and 2008 and found the majority of them had unhealthy eating habits.

Boys consumed 362 calories and girls consumed 282 calories from added sugar daily, a number that increased as the children got older. Forty-one percent of calories from additional sugar came from soda and other beverages, according to the study.

"If you look at individual items, the one that has the biggest contribution [to added sugar consumption] is soda," Cynthia Ogden, lead study researcher and epidemiologist of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that between 5 and 15 percent of daily calories come from sugars and fats combined.

The National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief published the study on Wednesday.

Lessening the number of calories children consume is imperative to curb childhood obesity. Over 12.5 million children ages 2-19 are obese, according to the CDC. The number has tripled since 1980.

In addition, childhood obesity-related healthcare costs $3 billion annually, according to a 2009 study published in Nature.

Parents need to watch what they buy and cook more at home to curb the calories their children eat, one dietician said.

"Whoever is the gatekeeper for the family food supply needs to take a good, hard look at their choices. Obviously, junk foods, cookies, desserts and sodas are high in sugar and non-nutritive calories," Samantha Heller, a dietitian and nutritionist based in Connecticut, reported.

However, many unexpected foods are high in sugars. Parents need to check ingredient lists for hidden sugars such as brown rice syrup, dextrose, fructose, molasses, sucrose, corn sweetener, barley malt syrup, fruit juice concentrates, glucose, cane juice syrup and sorghum, reported.

TV Exposure and Eating Disorders in Girls

Researchers from Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine examined the link between media consumption and eating disorders among adolescent girls in Fiji.

What they found was surprising. The study’s subjects did not even need to have a television at home to see raised risk levels of eating disorder symptoms.

In fact, by far the biggest factor for eating disorders was how many of a subject’s friends and schoolmates had access to TV. By contrast, researchers found that direct forms of exposure, like personal or parental viewing, did not have an independent impact, when factors like urban location, body shape and other influences were taken into account.

It appeared that changing attitudes within a group that had been exposed to television were a more powerful factor than actually watching the programs themselves. In fact, higher peer media exposure were linked to a 60 percent increase in a girl’s odds of having a high level of eating disorder symptoms, independently of her own viewing.

Lead author Anne Becker, vice chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, said this was the first study to attempt to quantify the role of social networks in spreading the negative consequences of media consumption on eating disorders.

“Our findings suggest that social network exposure is not just a minor influence on eating pathology here, but rather, IS the exposure of concern,” she said.

“If you are a parent and you are concerned about limiting cultural exposure, it simply isn’t going to be enough to switch off the TV. If you are going to think about interventions, it would have to be at a community or peer-based level.”

Becker hopes the paper will encourage debate about responsible programming and the regulation of media content to prevent children from secondhand exposure.

“Up until now, it has been very difficult to get people who produce media as entertainment to come to the table and think about how they might ensure that their products are not harmful to children,” she said.

To read more got to Science Blog article

Eating Healthily Can Mean Eating Slower

The British Medical Journal recently published interesting results regarding use of a mandometer with overweight kids.

A mandometer is a device used to gauge one’s rate of eating. Kids ages 9-17 that used the device were compared to children who didn’t. After 6 months, the mandometer-users had lower fat mass and an overall lower body mass index (BMI), and ate smaller portions and at a slower rate than their non-mandometer using counterparts.

Better yet, six months later the effects were still in place- the children continued to eat smaller portions at a slower eating pace. In other words, having spent time with the mandometer for six months really influenced a behavior change in users.

So what does this mean? It’s just nice when something we believe based on anecdotal evidence is proven through research—especially with results this significant. As a reminder, it takes our bodies anywhere from 15-20 minutes to recognise we’re eating.

The brain and stomach don’t connect the second we put food in our mouths. When you eat fast you may ingest an entire meal before your body recognises you’ve eaten. Then you reach for seconds, thinking you’re still hungry, and you don’t feel the discomforts of overeating until it’s too late. Eating too fast can also result in oesophagial reflux, gassiness, and bloating.

Past research has suggested eating too fast may also double a person’s risk of being overweight.

You can download and read the full report in PDF format. Click Here....

NB: This blog is for information only and is not in any way endorsing the Mandometer product.