Parental Filter

My kids are grown up now, so I'm not faced with the decision any more, but back in those earlier times fast food was considered more of a novelty, kind of like "it's okay on vacation, but never as a serious meal" things are so very different today, the advertising is so tied-in with popular movies and tv shows that kids probably have fits if they can't have fast food.

I think that it is unwise to categorize "fast food" There are plenty of reasonable choices available at McDonalds... for the child, how about a hamburger happymeal with apple slices and milk .. and for you how about a grilled chicken sandwich, hold the mayo, and a salad with fat free dressing and a sugar-free lemonade or water. Another good choice is the wendy's chili, or the Turkey Sandwich at Subway. These are not things you would want to eat all the time due to the sodium content, but they are not unreasonable meal choices.

There are PLENTY of foods from the grocery store that are very poor choices.. such as hot pockets, swansons hungry man dinners, raman noodles, fish sticks, chicken nuggets, tater tots, or chicken pot pies. All of these things are every bit as bad as or even worse than "fast food"

Next time you go to a fast food joint, get a nutritional menu and then compare it to some of the stuff you can buy pre-packaged at the grocery store and you'll see that the grocery store stuff is just as bad.

I try very hard to make good tasting and healthy food for my family. Since I know that everyone loves fast food, I use fast food as my model and develop healthier versions of it. Their favorite is buffalo chicken ranch wraps loaded with lettuce, onion, peppers, cucumber, and carrot shreds, served with olive oil potato wedges and raspberry/papaya yogurt smoothies. They say it tastes every bit as unhealthy as McDonalds but I know that it is good nutritious food that they can eat a few times a week if they want since it is low in sodium and saturated fat and contains no refined flour.

I'm glad you brought this up. It often riles me when someone gets so worked up about not giving their child a 260 calorie fast food burger when they buy all that horrid processed junk food in the store and think they're doing a better job.

You're right... there are many "fast food joint" offerings that are much healthier than some of the junk offered in the grocery store.

I have always thought that things that were absolutely forbidden became more attractive to kids. Fast Food was not banned in our family, if the child was invited to a party at Mc Donalds I had no problem with that. Very occasionally if we were travelling we would have fast food. It wasn't a big deal but it wasn't a regular feature in our diet.

We were much the same, fast food was eaten rarely and not really seen as a treat. We set out to make other options 'treats' things such as picnics, dinner at grandma's, having friends round for a special tea, cooking something special together etc.

Deltic, I like that idea of making other things treats. The nice thing is that the treats you listed all involve spending family time with the child too.

Those sounds like very nice treats indeed. I had some fast food growing up... not really often but we did that on Friday nights when the family went out together.

Same thing for my daughter. There haven't been serious health problems so it doesn't seem to have hurt me in the least... again, not a whole lot of it.

I agree with you about not banning it because it only makes it more desirable. However I wold have thought that eating fast food once or twice a week is far too frequent. You are right that exercise and an active lifestyle is important too.

I think that is too often as well, but we have to think this through for ourselves and find an answer that is right for our own lives and routines.

Confession: Sometimes I just have a McDonald's chocolate milkshake...
We'll get Subway veggie sandwiches now and then; we always order the veggie delight. You have to watch the sandwich makers really carefully to make sure they change their plastic gloves and don't cut the sandwich with the knife they've used on the meat.