QSK Reader RobO noted this good bit of news, as a follow-on to my post about positive changes to school lunches this fall. Thanks, RobO!

His note reminded me to write something I meant to say in that earlier post: While school lunch is not a focus for Quick Serve Kids, I do see school as a place where kids learn important social norms. Schools act in the place of parents during the day, and it's important they set a good example. Plus kids who feel better will learn and behave better.

Not to mention, when you feel confident they've had a decent lunch, you can feel better about some treats as after-school snacks. You know?

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QSK reader Dixie sent in a great question:

Why is there an amazing dearth of green vegetables—other than nutrition-poor iceberg lettuce salads—at most fast food restaurants? I have noticed steam-in-bag vegetables in the frozen food aisle. Why can't these be adapted to quick-serve restaurants? The bags could be sized down to individual serving sizes, distributed in bulk to restaurants, and all that has to be done is to pop a little bag in the microwave and *poof* a healthy side item.

I agree.

It's time to explode the myth that no kids like green veggies. Baby A and her little friends—the majority of them, anyway—are big fans of things like broccoli, peas, edamame, zucchini, and otherwise colored vegetables.

So why not some little cups of chopped veggies? Or peas and carrots? I'd really appreciate having that option, especially at dinnertime. Anyone from the industry, or any parents, want to comment?

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In June, QSK reported on Wendy's plans to switch to a trans-fat-free cooking oil systemwide by August.

Well, it's not even the end of the month, technically, and they've done it. Congratulations, Wendy's, on a bold and sweeping move.

Today Wendy's said it is now cooking with oil that has zero grams of trans fat per serving at its six thousand U.S. restaurants. Most Wendy's restaurants in Canada are already using the new oil, with all scheduled to be on board within the next few weeks. Wendy's is the first major quick-serve restaurant chain to switch to a non-hydrogenated cooking oil for its French fries and chicken items. (Some smaller chains have done it, too, while some majors have promised but not delivered.)

Wendy's Interim CEO Kerrii Anderson said the company put two years of research and development into the new oil before the June pledge to switch.

Wendy's breaded chicken sandwiches, nuggets, and strips now have zero grams of trans fat. Depending on the serving size, trans fats in French fry offerings will range from zero to 0.5 grams. Kids' Meal nuggets and fries will have zero grams of trans fat. (The kids' size fries used to have 3.5 grams of TFAs.)

"We've already served millions of servings of food cooked in the new soy/corn oil blend with zero grams of trans fat, and consumers have reaffirmed that there is absolutely no difference in taste," said Ian Rowden, Wendy's executive vice president and chief marketing officer, in the company's news release. "Furthermore, the conversion to the new oil has been cost neutral to our system.

"This is the right thing to do," said Rowden, "and it's an important innovation for all of us in the Wendy's family."

Changes to Wendy's cooking oil and chicken items will reduce trans fats for Wendy's chicken and fries by an average of 95 percent. Beyond this effort, Wendy's is working directly with its French fry suppliers to further reduce trans fats that occur as part of the par frying process at their facilities, with a goal of zero grams.

Wendy's says its use of the non-hydrogenated oil also means on average a 20 percent reduction in saturated fats in the breaded chicken items and French fries.

The USDA's 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that individuals substitute mono and polyunsaturated fats for saturated fats, and consume as little trans fats as possible as part of a healthful diet.

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Just ran across this site and thought you might want to add it to your bookmarks—once you're finished adding Quick Serve Kids, of course.

It's Feel Good Fast Food, and it looks to be a fairly community-driven site about exactly what it says—better choices in fast food. Here's the site in their words:

This blog is intended to be a forum to discuss topics around Feel Good Fast FoodTM.

Topics we plan to cover include: health information, restaurant news, tips for living a “Feel Good” lifestyle, stories about other “Feel Good” companies: new and old, and other things that inspire us.

We welcome your additions to this blog and any comments you have to improve it.

Give it a look. There's not a ton of content yet. Hopefully they'll continue to flesh it out.

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Lots of you are sending kids back to school this week. And I envy you.

No, not really. But the way Baby A has been acting lately—so full of sassy two-ness that I just want to lose all my Love and Logic cool and yell right back at her—has made made me entertain the thought, for a few seconds here and there, of herding her onto the school bus with the older neighborhood kids.

She'd probably like it, actually. And the day it happens, for real, I'll be a mess. Believe me, I'm treasuring these days, even when they involve massive whining and hitting (hers), occasional tears (mine), and shoulders smeared with guacamole and Coach purses filled with rocks from the front walk (mine and mine...don't ask, and, no, I don't think these are problems...they're just part of life with a preschooler).

To the point: It's back-to-school time, and I've been surprised by the number of stories about improvements in school lunch programs. From pilot programs to vending-machine makeovers, there's a small tide of change this year, thanks in part to federal requirements that schools create wellness guidelines. Critics say simply asking for guidelines isn't enough. I'm inclined to agree. But thank goodness some school systems are seizing the chance to make changes.

A smattering from around the country:

> Kids, Meet Veggies: I lovelovelove the image of the roving Sweet Potato Lady in this New York Times piece. The same story is covered, with some good commentary from parents, at Blogging Baby.

> Oven-baked, not fried: A Florida school system makes some key changes, according to this local NBC affiliate story.

> Changes are afoot, too, in the Appleton, Wisconsin, school system. I loved this quote: “We keep things balanced,” Martin said. “The menu is an indirect teaching tool, and we balance things throughout the week.”

> A San Franciso mom struggles to find the right lunch ingredients for her daughter. Then they both find a solution in Kid Chow, a new school lunch service.

Have your kids started school yet? And have you seen any changes in the quality of your school's lunches? Please comment and share....

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KFC is convening a panel of moms to seek their advice. Good news.

The company today announced it's forming the KFC Moms Matter! Advisory Board. Mothers from different backgrounds and parts of the country will join a group of mothers employed by KFC on the new Advisory Board.

Julienne Smith, founder and author of "Food For Talk," a recipe box of conversation starters that promote family bonding, will join the Advisory Board as an expert contributor.

KFC says the Advisory Board will meet in person bi-annually, hold quarterly conference calls, and host monthly dinner meetings in their hometowns to gain information and advise KFC on everything from trends that affect families to new product ideas. Its first task will be to work with the company to establish an online community (hey!) aimed at reducing everyday stress for moms. The online community will roll out nationally next year.

KFC's follows in the tracks of McDonald's, which created its Global Moms Panel in May. As I said when I posted about McD's, here's hoping KFC's move is more than a token gesture. The chains really need to listen—and if they do, together we can create better options and better business for everyone.

What do you think? Will this be more than a trend? And should it be?

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I loved being pregnant with Baby A, but I sure did miss eating my favorite soft cheeses—goat cheeses, feta, and bleus—during those ten months.

In case you weren't aware, pregnant women should avoid soft cheeses because of the risk of listeriosis, or poisoning from listeria bacteria.

Expectant moms are supposed to avoid cold cuts, too, which can put a squeeze on your quick-serve choices. Pregnant and craving one of Arby's Market Fresh deli sandwiches? Sorry! In the mood for a Frescata sandwich at Wendy's? Most doctors and midwives will tell you to try something else.

Now it looks like there's a way to kill listeria in food before it's served—although the solution is kind of hard to stomach.

Last Friday the FDA granted its first-ever approval of viruses as a food additive. Seems a blend of six bacteria-killing viruses (bacteriophages) can be sprayed on cold cuts, hot dogs, and sausages to

combat common microbes, like listeria, that kill hundreds of people each year and can harm or kill fetuses.

"As long as it used in accordance with the regulations, we have concluded it's safe," Andrew Zajac, from the FDA's office of food additive safety, told Associated Press. People come into contact with phages through food, water, and the environment, and they are found in our digestive tracts, the FDA said.

Consumers will not be aware that meat and poultry products have been treated with the spray, Zajac added. The Department of Agriculture will regulate use of the product.

The maker of the virus spray, Baltimore-based firm Intralytix, sayd it also plans to seek FDA approval for another bacteriophage product to kill E. coli bacteria on beef before it is ground.

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My mom loves to shop at the Publix grocery store in her suburban Atlanta town. Sure, she'd love a Whole Foods and a Fresh Market, too, but for those staple stock-ups she always hits the Publix.

So I'm excited to let her know that Publix has a majority interest in a quick-serve salad bar concept called Crispers—and is expanding co-locations of Crispers and Publix in the South. (There are now nearly forty locaations in Florida.)

Based on what I've read, Crispers gets the connection between providing good options for kids and building repeat family visits. I also liked this bit about kids' meals:

We believe that nutrition is very important for children, and that you should have more choices than hamburgers and fried foods. So we’ve included plenty of fresh fruits, and main dishes

that we’re sure kids will love. There’s macaroni and cheese, quesadillas, and a whole lot more.

It's so easy to feed Baby A at the big salad quick-serves. For our family, it's a sure thing. There's so much variety, plus there's always a good soup and some mac-and-cheese. Hey, maybe Baby A and Nana can have a lunch date one day at a Crispers.

Meanwhile, salad concepts are flourishing in urban markets—just as you'd expect them to do.

How about your family? Are the salad-bar quick-serves a good choice for you? Comment and let me know.

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There was a great piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about healthy drive-thru options for kids.

The writer and her assistants looked at kids' meals at a number of chains and found, to quote the article, "[a]ll of the big chains offer at least one not-so-terrible option for kids." In fact, they found a great number of options, some of which you're probably familiar with, such as fruit cups, apple slices, and milk.

They also found some more unusual choices, like organic yogurt at St. Louis Bread Co., the Southwest chicken pita at Jack in the Box (with black beans and corn), and a little banana split just for kids at Sonic.

Wouldn't Baby A love that! "Ice cream" was about her fourth word ("imeeeeee!").

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NPR's "Morning Edition" today had a good segment about a Cordon Bleu–trained chef in Austin who is developing dishes for the city's school lunches. Give it a listen.

The show followed one focus group of kids ages eight and nine who tried the chef's ideas—things like zucchini lasagna and chicken vegetable soup—and basically cleaned their plates. Well, except for one little boy who didn't want to see anything green on his plate.

Here's an idea: What if, instead of the same old chicken nuggets, grilled cheese sandwiches, and fries we seen on kids' meal menus everywhere, the R&D departments at restaurant chains figured out how to adapt their regular menus for kids? By that I mean the burritos could be sized a bit smaller, the spicy dishes could be made milder, the sandwiches on a smaller roll.

That way we'd be sending a message that kids don't need exceptional foods—many of which are no good for them, anyway. What do you think, parents? How about you industry readers? Am I onto something?

Comment and let me know.

Posted by QSMama at 05:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Slate magazine reviews an array of quick-serve salads. Try before you buy...if only vicariously.

Quick-serves are heavily targeting moms with premium salads like these. Which one is your favorite? Why? Comment and let me know.

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I am not a germ warrior. The three-second-rule? I'm down with that. Germ-free environment? Impossible with kids, and probably not good for them, either. But today my own kid's hands skeeved me out, and that led to an idea.

Baby A and I met The Wonderful Husband for lunch at a restaurant. I'd gathered her from preschool—well, "book camp," where she's "studying" Sandra Boynton's Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs!—and put her in front of one of her favorite lunches when I realized I had not washed her hands.

What tipped me off? The brownish grub. The dried paint. The clay under her fingernails. Those didn't bother me as much as the stuff I couldn't see. But have you ever tried to take a hungry child away from a table laden with yummy things, especially to wash her hands? It's ugly.

Then it hit me: Wouldn't it be nice if, on the condiment bar with the napkins and straws and tiny packets of Tabasco (love those, by the way), there were packets of sanitizing wipes? You know, the kind they give you after a meal of crab legs or lobster or BBQ?

They're cheap, and they'd make us skeeving parents Oh.So.Happy.

If I were one of those moms, I'd have a few in my bag, along with Band-aids and Kleenex. But I'm not. And I don't.

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Have your teenagers been sneaking large quantities of Mentos and Diet Coke from your house? Seen any strange explosions in your back yard lately? It might be the latest teen Internet rage—at least the latest involving candy and a soft drink. (Our generation's was Space Rocks and regular Coke. Remember?)

"Go to any video-sharing website, such as YouTube," writes the Financial Times of London, "and hundreds of amateur films can be found showing bottles of Diet Coke transformed into foaming geysers or home-made rockets when mixed with the mints."

Hilarious. But what's really interesting is Coca-Cola's reaction to the web sensation.

Seeing the chance to attract a prime market (teens and young adults) to its web site, Coca-Cola has

recast its web site to accept and show amateur videos—not necessarily of Mentos and Diet Coke geysers, necessarily. (Go here and choose North America/English. The graphics are beautiful, as you'd expect from Coke.)

The Financial Times piece links Coke's new video site to a growing trend of media fragmentation—companies are finding it harder to reach big chunks of markets with a few buys. That tells me we're likely to see more moves like this from restaurant chains and other large retailers. That'll be especially true for brands that, like Coke, market through emotional connections with consumers. It's called, creatively, emotional marketing.

An aside, while we're talking YouTube: There's a cool new piece of shareware that downloads YouTube video directly to iTunes or your video iPod. Check it out. Now you can take your best Diet Coke/Mentos explosions on the road with you.

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Whoa, is Blogging Baby the new nexus for parental debate about kids and quick-serve restaurants? (WAIT. THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE QUICK SERVE KIDS. Rrrggggghhh.)

Anyway. I've spent the past half-hour hitting reload to follow the comments on that Blogging Baby post. (If you haven't followed the link, it's about Eric Schlosser's newest book, Chew On This, a sort of Fast Food Nation written for the pre-teen and teen set. Here's one snippet from a comment on BB:

"[...] Besides, although I rarely eat fast food, I don't want to know what goes into every piece of food I eat. Then I would eat only plants that don't cast shadows."

Me? I want to go into every dining experience with eyes wide open. When it's

a locally grown, high-end-ingredients meal, I want to know all the details so I can appreciate it more. When we open a bottle wine, I want to know all about it.

And when it's a quick-serve hamburger, I'm fine with being aware of its orgins, too—mainly because that helps me remember it needs to be a few times a month, or less, not a few times a week. OTOH, if a quick-serve I patronize has bought local produce, or otherwise worked to keep it local and benefit the community, I want to know that, too. I'll go back and support that.

How about you? Where does your family fall on this? Will you or your kids be reading Chew On This? Have you read Fast Food Nation or seen the movie?

Leave a comment and let me know. Let's get a good discusison going here, too.

Posted by QSMama at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a great debate going on over at Blogging Baby, spurred by a post about Burger King's new Quad Burger.

The post calls it "obesity on a bun." I think my cholesterol rose just from looking at the picture.

Visit and read...and comment!

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So last Saturday we're in the car around lunchtime when Baby A starts begging for something. It takes us a moment to catch on, but soon it's clear.

"Let's go eat at the Chick-fil-A with the little table. Please? I want to eat at my own little table. Daddy has a table, Mommy has a table, and I have my own table. Please, let's go."

So here's my message of the day to the quick-serve industry: I can't think of a less expensive, less labor-intensive way to get kids and families back to your restaurant.

Forget those million-dollar movie tie-ins! Buy a hundred-dollar table-and-chair set and put it in your dining room.
Keep it clean and in good condition, and I bet you your investment and more that we parents will keep it occupied.

Really: We loved it. A was so proud to do her own thing that The Wonderful Husband and I got to have a few minutes of conversation. That's so worth a $10 family meal.

In fact, there are many little touches that make eating out easier on us parents of little ones, like clean, convenient bathrooms and safely sized portions. Here's another one.

Curious about the URL on the painted table shown here? It's www.prissypots.com. The site says they do wholesale. Another wholesale source for kid-sized tables and chairs is here.

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