Chain and fast food restaurants will soon be required to provide calorie information for their main menu items, and that’s a good thing. Of course, providing information does not guarantee healthy options are available for those consumers that want them. While more healthful choices are becoming available there are just as many calorie-laden, sodium-packed options. Even with up-front nutrition information, it can be hard for consumers to find the “healthiest” options.
Fortunately, healthy options are now easier to find, thanks to the efforts of the First Lady’s Let’s Move! campaign and the Partnership for a Healthier America (of which Nemours is a founding member). The Darden group of restaurants, which includes Red Lobster and Olive Garden, announced today that they will provide healthier and lower-calorie options on their menus and will serve fruit or vegetables and milk as default choices to accompany kid’s meals. This new commitment by Darden will build on menu labeling by pairing information with healthy choices.
Nemours has been a vigorous advocate for menu labeling in Delaware, particularly when it comes to children’s meals, for this very reason. “We supported scaling menu labeling nationwide as part of legislation passed in 2009 and commend champions in Congress, including Delaware Senator Tom Carper, for their leadership in reaching that agreement,” said Debbie I. Chang, Vice President of Policy and Prevention for Nemours. “Today’s commitment by some of our most popular family restaurants to provide healthy kids meals is an important next step in providing nutrition information and healthy choices to families!”