Unhappy Meals

Last year, parents in Park Slope were outraged when a new ‘family friendly’ restaurant opened without including a children’s menu.

Dr. Rallie McAllister would be pleased. Dr. McAllister, author of Healthy Lunchbox and The Mommy MD Guide, urges parents to avoid kids’ meals, though when you are traveling, it isn’t always so easy. The fried foods, sugar and salt make these terrible choices.

My own bugaboo is when the kid’s meal vegetarian option is spaghetti, served with French fries. If we don’t eat offer a few fresh veggies – broccoli and dip, carrots, grape tomatoes – how will we get kids to choose healthy food on their own?

San Francisco, though makes it easy to eat healthy. Even at the interactive Exploratorium science museum, you can get a sandwich filled with local, sustainable produce. Compare this to the Boston Children’s Museum, which has a McDonald’s on-site. Or to hospitals around the country that have McDonald’s in the building.

San Francisco also recently banned promotional toy giveaways with children’s meals filled with too many calories and too much salt and saturated fat.
Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity just released a study that says “the average kids’ meal contains 616 calories, which may meet the needs of older, more active children, but provides too many calories for most younger children. If your child is 2-5 years old, she required 410 calories at lunch or dinner, or a third less.

And if you examine the study carefully, you see that the lower calorie counts come when you choose low fat plain milk for your child. If you let him get a soda or chocolate milk, or add cheese to a burger, the calorie count is much higher.

Dr. McAllister suggests parents let their kids eat some of their own meal, noting that restaurant portions are often so large that adults don’t need to finish them. In fact, last night, I had an excellent barley and wild mushroom risotto at Alchemy and brought more than half of it home. My daughter, after two hours of soccer, ate the remainder. We were both stuffed.

And not a bit of fried food passed our lips.

Family Farmers Market

In the nice weather, we make it a habit to visit farmers markets regularly. The food looks more appealing than in conventional supermarkets, the kids are naturally drawn to the fruits and vegetables, and they make a connection with the food they eat, where we buy it, and who grows it. In New York City, year round Greenmarkets bring kids close to the food source.

In the fall, we travel to our food, to go apple picking and to a pumpkin patch. It was a revelation to the kids to see that pumpkins actually grow on vines, not at produce stands.

But in winter, hunting for food becomes more of a challenge. The farmers market isn’t as appealing in the very cold weather; besides the cold, the choices are limited. So we turn to indoor cornucopias.

One of my kids’ favorite places is the giant Fairway Market at 125th St. If you think the ordinary city supermarket is frenetic, this one is on speed. It is not for the cautious, the claustrophobic, or the newly emerged walker.

Like its older downtown sibling, this Fairway begins in a sumptuous produce display, tempting even the most persnickety. Then there is the huge selection of bread. But outweighing all is the ‘cold room’ filled with fish, meat and dairy. It’s so cold that Fairway provides jackets. My daughters love to shiver their way through here, pausing at the lobsters and choosing a yogurt.

Chelsea Market, at 9th Avenue and 15th Street, is a collection of small shops under one roof. Here, kids can see bakers at work, and try wonderful selections from Amy’s Bread, Sarabeth’s Kitchen, Fat Witch Bakery. There are also places to get nuts, veggies and fruit.

We've eaten our way through Reading Terminal in Philadelphia, Logan Square Farmers Market in Chicago (both indoors and outdoors) and the Farmers Market LA.

Living in New York, I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to eat at a fast food chain restaurant. There are unlimited choices, not all overpriced. But when I travel, I know that sometimes, fast food is the only option.

But now, believe it or not, I am compelled to seek out Taco Bell. The chain recently launched a Drive-Thru Diet Menu that even has a vegetarian option. The Fresco Bean Burrito has a salsa of tomatoes, onions and cilantro instead of a thick cheese covering.

The bean burrito has 8 grams of fat and 340 calories – the same as the steak-based burrito supreme – and is surprisingly tasty. I would prefer a whole-grain tortilla to the white flour tortilla, but still, this is a step in the right direction for the chain, which urges people to ‘think outside the box.’