"Are you gonna eat that?"
NO WAY!!
According to a report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest,
Nearly every possible combination of the children’s meals at Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Sonic, Jack in the Box, and Chick-fil-A are too high in calories.”
Who’d have thought?
When the study says that the meal choices are “too high in calories”, what they mean is this:
Ninety-three percent of 1,474 possible choices at the 13 chains exceed 430 calories—an amount that is one-third of what the Institute of Medicine recommends that children aged four through eight should consume in a day.
According to the Mayo Clinic, the recommended daily caloric intake for girls aged four to eight is 1,200 to 1,800. For boys of the same age, 1,400 to 2,000. A little more than three times 430, but remember: 93% EXCEEDED 430 calories.
Now lets look at some of the really bad combinations at the restaurants included in the study.
Chili’s has 700 possible kids’ meal combinations, but 658, or 94 percent, of those are too high in calories, including one comprised of country-fried chicken crispers, cinnamon apples, and chocolate milk (1,020 calories) and another comprised of cheese pizza, homestyle fries, and lemonade (1,000 calories). Burger King has a “Big Kids” meal with a double cheeseburger, fries, and chocolate milk (910 calories), and Sonic has a “Wacky Pack” with 830 calories worth of grilled cheese, fries, and a slushie.
KFC has a wide variety of side items, but there are few meal combinations that keep a reasonable ceiling on calories, according to the study. One example of a high-cal combo KFC kid’s meal (the chain calls them “Laptop Meals”) has popcorn chicken, baked beans, biscuit, Teddy Grahams, and fruit punch, which has 940 calories. (KFC has since dropped Baked Cheetos from its kids’ meals, and some outlets vary the number of chicken strips or sides.)
Wow! Those terrible food choices for kids sound a lot like what I talked about in my post: Baby Food to Chicken Fingers: A Disconnect. The center’s director comments on how these choices continually being offered to kids sets them up for a life of bad habits.
“Parents want to feed their children healthy meals but America’s chain restaurants are setting parents up to fail,” said CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan. “McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, and other chains are conditioning kids to expect burgers, fried chicken, pizza, French fries, macaroni and cheese, and soda in various combination at almost every lunch and dinner.”
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.
“People may not get a heart attack until their 50s or 60s, but arteries begin to clog in childhood,” said Wootan. “Most of these kids’ meals appear to be designed to put America’s children on the fast-track to obesity, disability, heart attack, or diabetes.”
This gives “Happy Meal” a whole new meaning.
WOW!!! I had no idea that a) there were so many different possible combinations for kids meals. b) they had sooo many calories.
All these unhealthy food choices definitely make it hell on earth for parents to go out to eat with their kids. Most parents usually want to give children choices of their own when picking what they eat… and I’m assuming that most children, when left to their own devices, pick some awful meal combination that has 1000+ calories.
I wonder how aware parents are of the high caloric value of these children’s meals. Do you think parents would be more conscious of their children’s choices if the amount of calories per meal would have to be put on the menu? (Not that I would know how you would list all the different caloric values for over 700+ possible kids’ meal combinations on one single menu!!)
I totally agree with this post. I’m so tired of seeing kids being fed this trash. I almost cry when I see a parent taking their kids to a fast food joint for breakfast!!!!!!!! Can you imagine the health problems these kids will have in 5-8 years? I have a blog on fat burning. It’s at: “EasyFatBurning.wordpress.com”
I can hear the replies already:
“You don’t understand, you can’t possibly have kids…”
“I only take my precious darling to Mickey D’s as a reward for being a good little boy; it’s not his fault he has a slow metabolism”
“It’s genetics, stoopid”
“We only take the kids for fast food when their bodies intuitively tell them that they need high doses of salt, saturated fat and MSG”
“Healthy food is too expensive…”
That’s awesome.
Great Post – to bad that you even have to write it. It is hard to believe that people do not have enough common sense to know that the food at fast food restaurants is bad. I mean are you really telling us that we can not eat french fries and fried chicken balls and be healthy, ah man.
Oh yeah, great pics as well. Mark me down as a skinny person not mad at you.
Sadly I see kids like this all the time. Please People! Stop killing your kids with this junk!
Spot on, as usual. Also, did you see you made the front page of the dashboard?
the first person on the pic is not fat she’s pregnant
Sophie: Unless males can get pregnant… you’re wrong.
I think Lucy’s right, it’s gotta be a dude. Maternity tops don’t generally button all the way down the front. It keeps them from popping open the way that person’s shirt seems to be doing.
[...] McBloggenstein shows us why just about ALL kids’ fast food meals are BAD [...]
Excellent post. My only question is about the 94% statistic. How many meals exceeded the 430 recommended calories/meal by only 10, 50, or even 100 calories? I definitely would like to see a break down by calories in excess of the recommended amount/# of calories.
This is why I prefer Subway, I occasional head over to a Chinese fast food place but rarely do nowadays. It really is sad how much calories all these junk food places, its like they are working with the health care insurance companies
There’s an old saying: a little of what you fancy does you not-a-heart-attack, but you can have too much of a good heart attack.
The suck thing is, people either go health food nuts, or eat junk. It’s presented as a binary choice, either spend your entire life worrying about calories or you might as well just inject lard direct into your ventricles. There’s no harm in having stuff that’s a bit fatty as a treat really, any more than there is in going to a fancy restaurant on a special occasion; there’ll be calories up the ying-yang, but it’s only now and then, so it doesn’t matter.
Don’t parents realise that they are killing their children with kindness? When will the obesity epidemic end? When will parents be made to take responsibility for their actions for feeding their kids this crap? It’s not the kids who make bad choices, it’s the parents who allow their kids to make bad choices. Parents are supposed to know better and set a good example.
I watched a documentary about an obese guy last night, he was sooooooooo huge that they had to demolish his house just to get him into the ambulance. Anyway, while he was in hospital and recovering from several operations, his daughter was feeding her four month old baby a hamburger! WHO in their right mind feeds a four month old baby a hamburger? This made me so angry and with all due respect, it’s neglect. Other then salt, sugar, fat, and carbs, there isn’t any nutritional value in junk food. Tomato ketchup is NOT considered part of your daily vegetable intake – no matter what myth the fast food giants try and make you believe. Fast food tycoons want your kids to become addicted to junk food, because while your kids sacrifice their health and self esteem, the share holders line their pockets with fat-money.
Amen, sister! I was once a hefty child, but now I lost 45 pounds by not eating out at fast food joints that often and eating more meals at home!
Ha! You fat ass Westerners. It’s no wonder you’re so behind in the world when it comes to physical activities! Here in the East, we KNOW how to limit ourselves unlike you pigs. Alas, the Western world will be no more all because the people their are such fat slobs.
Please… stay out of Asia for us.
^_^
Kosaka, I may humbly say: your lovely words are as soft as cactus thorns satured with arsenic. Unless your words were born from pur sarcasm, I guess that a tiny bit of compassion would be good.
Thank you.
If you do not agree with that, I cannot say more.
I cant bileav people dont realize wut thay are doing to them selvs.The gonverment should close down some mcdanalds resterants.
i work in fast food, and how much fried junk people give their kids is disgusting. it’s one thing to stop at mcdonald’s once or twice every few months for one meal, but it’s another when your kids are eating fast food more than once a week. and so many people get their kids a kid’s meal and ice cream, others constantly asking if they can get a bigger soda or ice cream with the kid’s meal.
go home and make your kids dinner sometimes. or at least get them water and fruit with the kid’s meal instead of soda and fries.
[...] on fugu?Almost Fit posted his Omnivore list – What a palate!McBloggenstein shows us why just about ALL kids’ fast food meals are BAD Rebecca Scritchfield talked about Truvia – the stevia product that Coca Cola is positioning [...]
[...] the worse they are for our health. e.g. Trans Fats, High Fructose Corn Syrup and just about any kid’s meal at a fast-food [...]