Kids are getting fatter but, apparently, mom’s (or dad’s) home cooking isn’t the main culprit.
Try fast food or food prepared in stores.
In 1977, food made outside the home represented less than a quarter of the calories kids consumed each day. By 2006, that percentage had climbed to just over a third. That’s a lot of Happy Meals.
In fact, kids now get more of their calories from fast food than from food eaten at school, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers write in the August issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
No one before had ever quantified how much store-prepared foods kids ate away from home (think sausage “burrito roller” from 7-Eleven scarfed down in the car), the researchers write. They based their findings on data from four nationally representative surveys of food intake that included nearly 30,000 children and teens ages 2 to 18.
Feeling guilty yet? But really, who has the time to grocery shop and cook?
Yvonne Bennett doesn’t. The mother-of-two, who lives in Bethesda, Md., works fulltime for a federal agency, and her husband Mark isn’t due home from a year-long tour with the Army in Afghanistan until October.
She and her kids dined Saturday evening at the Noodles & Company—named one of Parents magazine’s top 10 restaurant chains this year--in downtown Silver Spring, Md., another Washington, D.C., suburb.
“It’s a time thing,” Bennett says as her tow-headed son, Matthew, 2, climbs over and around their booth and big sister Allyson, 7, looks on. “Sometimes I don’t feel like cooking in the evening.”
She appreciates child-friendly restaurants. Besides Noodles & Company, McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A are favorites.
“I worry about nutrition,” Bennett acknowledges. She does like the fact that the county in which she lives has for the past year required chain restaurants to post nutrition information for their dishes.
Is what’s for dinner at your house often fast food? How often does your family eat out? Do you worry that you might be setting a bad nutritional example?
Rita Rubin, a contributing writer for msnbc.com and today.com, previously covered medicine for USA Today and U.S. News & World Report. She lives in suburban Washington, D.C., with her husband and two daughters.