Photo: Little Grey, Flickr.
America: the land of the free... and the fat. In the nation's more-is-more eating culture, three in five Americans are officially considered overweight -- and kids are no exception, one in three of whom reportedly eats fast food on a daily basis. But waistline-watchdog MSNBC has culled a list of "20 Worst Kids' Foods in America," to shed light upon some particularly fattening kids'-meal culprits.
Categories range from "worst homestyle meal" (Boston Market's Kids' Meat Loaf with Sweet Potato Casserole and Cornbread, which packs a whopping 890 calories into a tiny TV dinner), to "worst beverage" (the super-saccharine SunnyD Smooth Style, which boosts 60 grams of sugar into one measly cup -- triple that of a cup of Tropicana), to the "worst kids' meal in America": Uno Chicago Grill's Kid's Combo with French Fries, a monochromatic carb-fest cramming kids with cheese sticks, chicken nuggets and fries, a monster of a meal weighing in at 1,250 calories and 2,850 milligrams sodium.
It's no wonder that 16 percent of today's youth, aged 6 to 19, is overweight or obese with the gut bombs like those listed in the regular meal rotations, according to the report. Shockingly, "today's children may turn out to be the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will actually be shorter than that of their parents" because of obesity-related health problems, Michael Pollan writes in "The Omnivore's Dilemma."
What do you think is to blame for the rise of childhood obesity -- is it fair to blame fast-food providers or the parents?
[Via MSNBC]
10-22-2009 @4:43PM art_erickson said... There appears to be an obesity 'pandemic', meaning, it is not isolated to a specific location.
Obesity is not limited to developed nations either. Many remote villages have the same symptoms.
One proposed theory is a virus. Kinda like the bee death problem the cause appears difficult to identify.
Perhaps it as simple as food availability. Regardless of location, the shipping of food (especially raw bulk bags)has reduced the incidence of malnutrition.
The problem comes in when the body doesn't realize the chance of starving is remote, so it saves as much fat as it can. The flip side of this is the amount of effort required to earn a living/survive. Mechanization has allowed us to make the food supply exceed the growth in population. Very few people have to 'work the land' to feed the rest of us.
All meals are composed of fat, protein, and carbs, in varying proportion - cake is made from wheat, milk, and eggs - so far so good. I consider a 'fully dressed' burger to be a healthy meal. If you wish to make a 'wrap' so be it. But that isn't what's making you fat.
It is amusing how some people obsess over the details but miss the larger picture.
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10-22-2009 @6:06PM Rob O. said... Fast-food providers could opt to improve the nutritional value of their fare. Sure, it'd cost a bit more, but economies of scale suggest that it'd become more affordable as more fast food purveyors jump on-board. And if you need to pass on some of the cost to me, so be it.
Some chains are getting better - Whataburger, for example, offers whole wheat buns as an option (though not as a default) on its hamburgers. Now, there's no telling if the whole wheat buns they're offering truly have much fiber instead of the old "let's add molasses to make our bread appear darker" trick. But hey, it's a start...
But by the same token, making sensible choices for my family are still my responsibility. If the fast food restaurant I'm visiting doesn't offer healthier options or alternatives, it's my job to walk out the door and give my business to another company.
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10-22-2009 @10:24PM MaryB said... As a parent, I think we have to assume the responsibility, even though it's admittedly very difficult. We can't assume that Uno's or McDonald's first responsibility is our children's health - their first responsibility is to their stockholders, whether we like to admit it or not! But I would have never guessed a kid's meal could hold 1,250 calories! I appreciate your post and will pass it on!
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10-23-2009 @12:55AM Mary said... I think I'll blame the navigation system on my car. After all, if I program in "fast food" and "vegetables", it plots a course into a telephone pole. The navi does much better with just "fast food".
But as a parent, I am the one driving the car. And my young kids aren't quite ready to be monitoring their portion size and ingredients.
Sure, it would be great if all fast food providers had great, healthy menu options But until then, I will vote with my wallet and keep driving past the fast food with its large portions, trans fat and high fructose corn syrup.
For more on my car making my dinner decisions: http://www.healthy-diet-mom.com/what-is-trans-fat.html
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10-26-2009 @1:20PM Tracey said... I really think it's a combination of lifestyle changes. We have kids that are trapped inside by parents influenced by non-factual-based media fear-mongering (see http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/ ) at a time when statisically there is less crime than any time since the 60's and 70's. Yet kids are mostly forced to stay inside, on the couch, when historically kids used to get hours' worth of exercise every day. In some less-trendy areas kids can still be kids.
And then there is definitely a change in family eating habits. No longer does Mom have a garden in the summer and cook lots of produce-heavy dishes a good part of the year. No longer can kids go out in the garden and grab a sweet pepper, tomato or cucumber for a snack, or an apple off the tree. Dubious "Fruit Snacks" take the place, and are mostly corn syrup unless they say they're 100% fruit. Even then, yesterday's kids wouldn't have eaten that amount of fruit at one sitting (each fruit snack would contain 3-5 or more times the amount of fruit eaten whole). And kids busy running around playing don't feel the need to snack nearly as often as someone sitting on a couch.
I think the whole restaurant thing is definitely a culprit, too, but it's just the change away from the traditional ways of life. If restaurant meals for adults often have outsized proportions, so do the ones for kids. I am constantly amazed that my 4-year-old will just take a few bites of something and be happy. She looks like the pictures of 4-year-olds of 1950, and it's hard to find clothes for her because most clothing manufacturers now assume kids are overweight. I have to look for ones with straps in the waistbands, or her pants fall down. She's no famine figure; she's just a normal, healthy, non-overweight child.
I think many families could get a better handle on their kids' weight by doing two things: encouraging their kids to go outside to play, and to use a menu-mailer service instead of going to restaurants. Menu mailers do all the planning for you, including a shopping list you can fax to a grocery delivery service. There are at least a couple of dozen ones out there, including my own whole-foods special dietary needs one ( http://goodlifemenus.com) and the excellent easy gourmet on by Katie Zeller, http://www.thymeforcooking.com . Instead of having to sit still in a restaurant and then coming home to the Playstation, your kids can be playing outside while you fix a healthy meal you didn't have to plan.
Oh, and if you must, a Wii provides at least a little more activity than the typical game console.
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10-27-2009 @7:33AM Mandy said... While I believe that what a kid eats is ultimately up to the parents, I think that our society allows parents to be put at a disadvantage.
Fast food and junk food producers hire the best child psychologists to make sure kids want their food. The media spends loads of time and money trying to convince parents that they don't have enough time to cook a healthy meal. And then some parents get stuck in jobs with long hours that keep them away from their kids, leaving them less defensive to the "I want, I want, I want!" cries. And finally, the media also likes to convince parents that if they let their kids play outside, they will be abducted.
It's not a level playing field at all.
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10-30-2009 @10:34PM john said... A oouple of years ago some restaurants such as Apple bees, Friendlies and Ruby Tuesday changed out some of their fares with low carb/healthier options. These restaurants started to lose revenue cause people went else where. The restaurants then changed the items back to the original products and guess what? The customers came back.
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