The menus offered to children by most U.S. restaurant chains have too many calories, too much salt or fat, and often not a hint of vegetables or fruit, according to a study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The group, which has agitated for everything from healthier popcorn at the movies to calorie labeling in supermarkets, found that among almost 3,500 combinations surveyed, kids' meals failed to meet nutritional standards 97 percent of the time.

That was a marginal improvement over 2008 when such meals failed to meet standards 99 percent of the time.

Every children's meal offered at popular chains such as Chipotle Mexican Grill, Dairy Queen, Hardee's, McDonald's, Panda Express, Perkins Family Restaurants and Popeyes fell short of standards adopted by the center from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's nutritional recommendations.

The meals also fell short of standards set by the National Restaurant Association's Kids LiveWell Program, said the CSPI, which titled its study, "Kids' Meals: Obesity on the Menu."

"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," said Margo Wootan, CSPI nutrition policy director. "It's like the restaurant industry didn't get the memo that there's a childhood obesity crisis."

Among the meals singled out was Applebees' grilled cheese sandwich on sourdough bread, fries and two percent chocolate milk, which has 1,210 calories, 62 grams of fat and 2,340 milligrams of sodium.

The combo meal had nearly three times as many calories as the CSPI's criteria for four- to- eight-year-olds suggest.

At Ruby Tuesday, the macaroni and cheese, white cheddar mashed potatoes and fruit punch combo has 870 calories, 46 grams of fat and 1700 milligrams of sodium, said Wootan.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that children eat no more than 2,300 milligrams of salt each day to avoid high blood pressure, which can lead to coronary disease, stroke and other ailments.

Being overweight as a child makes a person vulnerable to heart disease, diabetes and a shortened life span. About one-third of American children are now considered overweight and 17 percent are considered obese, according to USDA's Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The CSPI cited Subway restaurants' Fresh Fit For Kids meal combinations as exceptions to the salty, fatty norm.

Subway serves apple slices with its kid-sized sub sandwiches and offers low-fat milk or bottled water instead of soda. All eight of its children's meals met CSPI's nutrition criteria.

A few other establishments have begun to offer side dishes beyond French fries. In fact, every child's meal at Longhorn Steakhouse now comes with fruit or a vegetable.

"More chains are adding fruit, like apple slices, to their menus, but practically every chain could be adding more vegetable and whole grain options," said Ameena Batada, an assistant professor in the Department of Health and Wellness at the University of North Carolina Asheville.

Labeling can be a potent tool. The report cited two studies that indicated customers who are provided with calorie counts on the menu sometimes gravitate toward healthier choices.

To produce its study, the CSPI looked at 50 top U.S. chain restaurants, finding 34 of them had meals designed for children and were willing to provide nutritional data. It analyzed those meals and meal combinations.

Related:

• Are restaurant calorie-counts accurate?
• Eating out piles on the calories
• The 20 worst kid's foods in America

www.quorn.us

Matt Ernst started worrying when his face swelled up and turned deep red. Panic hit when his throat began to feel tighter and tighter, till he was gasping for air.

Figuring that Ernst was having an allergic reaction, his girlfriend handed him some Benadryl. It didn’t take long for the antihistamine to take hold and for Ernst’s throat to begin to open up.

As the couple tried to figure out what might have caused the reaction, Ernst recalled the last thing he’d eaten: a fake chicken cutlet. Then the 48-year-old Florida software salesman remembered the scratchy, itchy feeling he’d had in his throat the last time he’d eaten the meat substitute made by Quorn Foods, Inc.

A quick web search and Ernst discovered he wasn’t the first to have a reaction after eating a Quorn cutlet. The website for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) described similar episodes in others and the group's nearly decade-long campaign to get the Food and Drug Administration to either pull Quorn’s fungus-based meat substitutes or to add a warning to the products’ labels.

Quorn products, sold at popular grocery chains including Whole Foods, come in the shape of artificial “Chik’n” patties or nuggets – or even cylindrical beef approximations or turkey “roasts."  The main ingredient is a so-called mycoprotein --  protein extracted from a microscopic fungus. Quorn has sparked a yum or eww debate among vegetarians since it hit the U.S. market nearly a decade ago.

CSPI, dubbed the “food police” for picking on makers of fattening foods, recently provided a report to the FDA detailing 500 adverse reactions to Quorn’s mycoprotein in U.S. customers. The consumer watchdog group also says that it has also compiled a list of 1,200 more adverse events from European and Australian customers.

In a letter to the FDA, CSPI’s executive director Michael Jacobson described several accounts in detail, including the case of a 20-year-old man Texas man who said he began to feel nauseous soon after eating Quorn’s Chik’n Nuggets and then blacked out, fell, and hit his head. Also detailed was the case of a 75-year-old Maryland woman who, four hours after consuming a Quorn Chik’n patty, began vomiting uncontrollably while at a Les Miserables performance, passed out and eventually ended up in the emergency room treated with an anti-nausea medication.

Jacobson told the FDA, “we believe, and we suspect that any reasonable person would believe, that any novel food ingredient that causes hives, anaphylactic reactions, or vomiting so violent that blood vessels burst, cannot, indeed, must not, be considered by the FDA to be ‘generally recognized as safe.’”

But Steve Marinker, a spokesman for Quorn Foods, said the products "have been extensively tested and approved as safe by the relevant regulator in each market. The level of intolerance to Quorn products is extremely low and much lower than for other protein foods such as soya, nuts, shellfish, dairy and eggs."

For its part, the FDA argues that while there may have been some reactions to the Quorn product, they are rare – and most likely not due to allergies to the food.

The agency took a close look at the adverse event reports forwarded to it by CSPI as well as those reported in the medical literature and concluded that there was “no evidence that mycoprotein-containing products cause a heightened allergic risk or other food safety concern,” said Douglas Karas, an FDA spokesperson.

The bottom line, Karas said, is that most of the reactions are probably due to “intolerance” rather than allergic reactions. “In the case of mycoprotein, some highly sensitive consumers appear prone to adverse gastrointestinal effects after eating mycoprotein, which are, judging from the reports very unpleasant,” he added.  

That response doesn’t sit well with Gary Ebert, a 43-year-old software engineer from Silver Springs, Md. Ebert has been a vegetarian most of his life and was happy when he found Quorn’s line of foods. But after one of the products made him violently ill, Ebert said he thinks mycoprotein should come with a warning on its label.

“I for one don’t think unreasonable for the label to say that this might make you so sick you won’t be able to eat solid food for 24 to 36 hours,” Ebert said.