• Burger King to Offer Healthier Kid's Meal

Burger King to Offer Healthier Kid's Meal

Burger King pledged Wednesday to offer healthier fast-food items for children under 12, with plans to sell and market flame-broiled Chicken Tenders and apples cut to resemble thick-cut french fries.

Burger King, the world's second largest hamburger chain, has set nutritional guidelines to follow when targeting children under 12 in advertising, including limiting ads to Kids Meals that contain no more than 560 calories, less than 30 percent of calories from fat and no more than 10 percent of calories from added sugars.

Burger King is building a Kids Meal that will contain the flame-broiled Tenders, organic unsweetened applesauce and low-fat milk, for a total of 305 calories and 8.5 grams of fat. It will be available in restaurants sometime in 2008, the company said.

The fast-food chain is also developing what it calls BK Fresh Apple Fries. The red apples are cut to resemble french fries and are served in the same containers as fries, but they are not fried and are served skinless and cold. The 2.4-ounce serving of Apple Fries will have 35 calories, a small serving of Burger King french fries has 230 calories and 13 grams of fat.

Burger King wants to demonstrate through product innovation that better-for-you foods can be fun and taste good.

Burger King will use U.S. grown apples that are cut and packaged in a sterile environment and subjected to a pre-wash that contains lemon to keep them from turning brown.

Burger King also sells salads and has a veggie burger.

Dr. Jim's comment: Bravo to BK! Let's face it, fast food is always going to be a part of our diet, and we need healthy but yummy choices for our families. The food companies want to keep the customers happy, so they're offering healthy choices. Now it's up to us make those healthy choices in the drive through. If we buy it, they'll keep making it! These flame-broiled chicken tenders seem like they'll be a perfect choice even for adults who are trying to cut their carb intake.

This story was being discussed on The View today, and one of the hosts mentioned that their kids are going to ask, "But where are my fries." This is because most kids think that when you go to a fast food restaurant, you are supposed to get fries. Our kids used to think this, too. We would each get an order of fries with our burger. Then, at the end of the meal, we would still be eating out of our box of fries, despite already being full. We had obviously been ordering too much food, so I started ordering just two boxes of fries for the four of us. After a while, it became one box for all of us to share. Just enough to enjoy the yummy taste of deep fried potato, but not enough to completely occlude all of our arteries! Now, my kids don't expect fries at all, but are pleasantly surprised on the occasion that I order them. They never whine "Where are MY fries" (I think they're sick of my lectures about fries), but they cheer when they get to share an order of fries with the family.