Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Parental "No" Files - Forget About Breakfast Out


That picture up there is the kids' menu "Hansel and Gretel" breakfast from the Tutti Frutti restaurant here in Ottawa.

I guess it's appropriately named because it would certainly feed both Hansel and Gretel and perhaps even the mean witch.

My wife took the picture while on a "special date" with my 5 year old.

It's not surprising either.

A study conducted by the Center for Science in the Public interest a few years ago revealed that 93% of kids' meals contained more calories than a kids meal ought.

And those were primarily from the fast food places.

Fast casual things are probably even worse (as you can see up above).

Now my wife and I can count on our fingertips the number of times we've taken our 8, 5 and 3 year olds out to restaurants when we weren't travelling so I wasn't particularly concerned about the meal - yet many families practice regular meals out....

But I'm posting this for another reason as well. Take a peek at the portion up above as compared with the photo of the portion from Tutti Frutti's website.


I'd say the portion served to my daughter was nearly double the size of the advertised portion, and while Tutti Frutti doesn't post calorie counts on their menu, had they done so we'd have been duped as the portion served was markedly larger than the optimized portion used for photos and presumably also used for caloric analysis.

Gotta say - as far as parental "Nos" go - this is one I wholeheartedly think is on us as parents. The world isn't built for kids (or adults for that matter) to eat out regularly and come out the other end unscathed.