Children’s menus revised for health concerns, evolving palates
CHICAGO — Kids’ menus at most restaurants are as predictable as they are beige: chicken fingers, grilled cheese, buttered noodles, mac and cheese.
So Samira Nazem and her husband, Daniel Goff, make it a point to dine where they can find more varied and nutritious offerings for their two daughters, ages 4 and 6, whom they hope to expose to Chicago’s different cultures through cuisine.
“We will certainly reward places that treat kids like they can handle quality food and flavorful food,” said Nazem, 36, an attorney who lives on the city’s North Side.
As busy families eat out more frequently than generations past, they are demanding healthier and more interesting meal options for kids — and restaurants are increasingly stepping up to the plate.
Some higher-end restaurants are revamping children’s menus to cater to more sophisticated palates shaped by foodie parents. Meanwhile, a growing number of fast-food chains are reducing the calories in kids’ meals and removing soda as the included beverage.
The shift comes as the deepfried mozzarella sticks that were once a special-occasion treat threaten to become an everyday occurrence. Eating out now represents more than half of Americans’ food spending, up from 44 percent 30 years ago, and more than a third of their caloric intake, up from 17 percent in the late 1970s.
Concerned about the health implications, more than a dozen communities around the country have recently adopted laws mandating healthier restaurant kids’ menus, most by taking aim at the sugary beverages often included in meal bundles.
But despite the threat of laws, and voluntary industry efforts to promote change, most restaurants continue to promote standard children’s fare that public health advocates say is basically junk food that sets kids up for a lifetime of bad eating habits.
“Kids are not born with an innate desire for chicken nuggets, french fries and a soda,” said Margo Wootan, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy nonprofit in Washington, D.C. “That is a result of billions of dollars worth of marketing that has made it the idea of what kid food is.”
‘We did not dumb down flavors’
Nazem, who eats out with her family two or three times a week, finds the kids’ menus at most restaurants frustrating not only because they’re unhealthy but also because they’re limiting. She wants to expand her daughters’ culinary horizons but instead encounters beige fish sticks that likely came out of a box.
She is loyal to the restaurants that do kids’ menus differently, like Urban Belly in the Wicker Park neighborhood, where on a recent visit her children were munching on edamame, dumplings, chicken and rice and ramen soup. Asked what her favorite kind of food is, 4-year-old Lila Nazemgoff, who was using practice chopsticks on the edamame, proclaimed: “Sushi!”
Kids are more open-minded than many restaurants give them credit for, said Nazem, whose daughters for the most part have learned to eat what she and her husband eat.
“Both of our kids love steamed broccoli,” she said. “I don’t know why. We brainwashed them enough over the years they now think they like it.”
Of course, restaurants offer fatty kids’ dishes for a reason. Parents don’t want to spend money on food kids rarely finish, and those meals tend to be low cost. Also, many kids love them.
Taylor Wood, a 32-year-old freelance writer living in Lincoln Square, has a 4-year-old son who enjoys the lobster bisque from the hot bar at Mariano’s, a supermarket, and can’t get enough of salmon, which he calls “chicken fish.” But the offerings on kids’ menus, even at neighborhood restaurants with otherwise high-quality food, have created a cycle where he wants grilled cheese and fries every time they go out to eat. She worries denying him will cause a scream.
“There is a lot of pressure on parents to keep it civil in these spaces that are increasingly mixed-use between adults and children,” Wood said, and she’d rather avert a meltdown by acquiescing to grilled cheese than distracting her son with an iPad.
“I have to pick my hill to die on and I choose screens at the table,” she said.
It would help, she said, if more restaurants would offer smaller portions of regular menu items so that she could get her son salmon without spending $23.
A growing number of restaurants are taking that approach. Urban Belly chef-owner Bill Kim adapted items on the regular menu slightly to appeal to young taste buds, recasting a chicken pho as a $4 kids’ noodle soup and serving the $3 kids’ edamame with only salt instead of a spicy sauce. It reflects the experience of his own childhood.
“When I was growing up, there was no kids’ menu at our home,” said Kim, who was born in Korea and moved to the U.S. when he was 7. “If you didn’t eat what the adults were eating, you’re not going to eat.”