Restaurants lag in efforts to improve health of children’s menus

Despite promises by restaurants to make children’s menus healthier, an analysis of the nutritional content of more than 4,000 kids’ menu items from across the U.S. has found not much has changed, according to a study by a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researcher and colleagues.

The study findings, published in the March 2017 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, were discussed by two of the authors in a March 26, 2017 article in The Conversation.

“Despite industry promises to offer healthier kids’ menu options, between 2012 and 2015, our analysis found the amount of calories, salt and saturated fat in kids’ menu items has not budged,” wrote co-authors Alyssa Moran, Sc.D. candidate in the Department of Nutrition at  Harvard Chan School, and Christina Roberto, formerly of Harvard Chan School and now at the University of Pennsylvania. “Despite the health risks, kids eat at restaurants all of the time. In fact, kids eat restaurant food nearly as much as they eat at home,”

Read The Conversation article: Restaurants pledged to make kids’ meals healthier – but the data show not much has changed

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Nutritional quality of kids’ menus not improving (Harvard Chan press release)