Kids' Meals offered by Fast Food Chain Restaurants Unhealthy

Majority of the special meals for children offered by giant fast food chains do not meet nutritional standards set for kids, researchers from a non-profit organization, Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), say.

For the study, researchers from CSPI included 3,500 kids' meals combinations from 19 fast food chains, including McDonald's, Popeye's, Chipotle, Hardee's, Burger King and Wendy's. They found that, nutritional quality of the meals offered by most of the restaurants has not improved since 2008, when it last reviewed the restaurants. Unhealthy food items like chicken fingers, burgers, French fries and sugary drinks continued to be on the top of these restaurants' menus. On the other hand, researchers found that most of the foods (97 percent) contain high calories, fat and salt.

Applebee's Grilled Cheese sandwich with Fries and Chocolate milk topped the unhealthy meals list with 1,210 calories,  2,340 miligrams of sodium and 62 grams total fat and 21 grams saturated fat. Chili's, Denny's, Ruby Tuesday and Dairy Queen  followed Applebee's on the list.

Apart from that, most of the restaurants, including McDonald's, Popeye's, Chipotle, and Hardee's, did not have even a single meal that met the National Restaurant Association's (NRA) food criteria set for kids. 

According to the researchers, only Subway provides nutritious meals combinations for kids and encourages healthy eating by avoiding sugary drinks from the kids' list of and substituting it with low-fat milk or water.

"One out of every three American children is overweight or obese, but it's as if the chain restaurant industry didn't get the memo," CSPI nutrition policy director, Margo G. Wootan, said in a news release. "Most chains seem stuck in a time warp, serving up the same old meals based on chicken nuggets, burgers, macaroni and cheese, fries, and soda."

Similar to the current research, a study conducted by Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH) in June 2012, found children's meals offered by major food chain restaurants like Nando's, Harvester and Wetherspoons containing very high levels of salt; more than what they should have in an entire day.