Fussy toddlers, be warned: the end of the kiddies' menu is nigh

The Irish Hotels Federation plans to make menus healthier, especially for children. How will this work in a country where eating out with children usually means 'chips with everything' and salads are regarded with suspicion?

Kiddies' menus started on US railways during the post-second World War baby boom years. Parents were allowed to share a plate of "simple, wholesome fare" with their child or order half portions at half price. And for the fussy child, there was a menu guaranteed to please: wholesome hot cereal, a poached egg and milk toast.

We've lost the run of ourselves since then. Pleasing the fussy child has become a billion-euro international industry with a fast hold on children's palates, not just in restaurants but in the family kitchen.

The 1950s child reading a sci-fi comic on a train journey wouldn't recognise the sci-fi food that our own Irish kids are eating today.

A Yoplait Yop yoghurt drink is primarily milk and sugars, with only 2 per cent strawberry puree combined with stabilisers, colours and flavourings. A Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Strawberry soft bake bar has 8 per cent strawberry puree from concentrate, plus flavouring, all kinds of sugars and a variety of ingredients to make it chewy - such as vegetable oil, cellulose, xanthan gum, carrageenan and locust bean gum. Jordan's Frusli All-Fruit strawberry bars contain 0.5 per cent strawberry juice concentrate, but the bars are actually made from apples. No wonder the average Irish child eats only half a portion a day of fruit - kids reared on flavourings may not know what real fruit is supposed to taste like.

Parents are worried, so when the Irish Hotels Federation announced this week that it was planning a new healthy family menus policy, it received widespread approval. Now that we parents have started to wean ourselves off traditional adult "kiddie" foods such as chicken Kiev and chips, it's about time that we paid attention to the fact that one in four of our children is overweight or obese.

And, with more parents bringing their children out to eat, it's starting to get embarrassing to see Mum and Dad eating salad, grilled fish, lean meat and steamed vegetables while the kids tuck into high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar dishes designed to keep them quiet for an hour so that the parents can enjoy their bottle of Merlot.

In family restaurants, foods with child-appeal typically contain 50 to 100 per cent more fat and sugar than is recommended, while being low in vitamins, carbohydrates and other essential nutrients, according to analysis of restaurant children's meals by the Food Commission in the UK.

But will kids eat steamed vegetables and fish, with fruit salad for dessert? James Rendell, head chef at the Radisson hotel in Cork, trained partly in Europe and has seen the dramatic differences in diets between French and Irish children. "I have French friends with a child. She's been dining out with her parents since she was very young and now she'll eat anything." Irish kids, on the other hand, are so fond of their chicken nuggets and chips that Rendell has developed a healthy version for them, which involves home-made chicken goujons made with 100 per cent real meat, coated and baked instead of fried, with doorstep chips that, while deep-fried, contain less fat than thin chips.

Parents paying good money for a meal out or a weekend away just want their kids to be happy, and if that means sausages, then sausages it will be (although Rendell grills the kids' sausages so that they have less fat). But his children's menu option of steamed fish, vegetables and new potatoes is also popular. "I think parents are concerned; there's a major change in attitudes happening."

The Radisson is a four-star hotel. What about the rest of us for whom a meal out, due to our limited budgets, means pizza, chicken wings, burgers, Tex-Mex or Chinese because that's all we can afford? Where are the mid-scale family restaurants serving healthy food? This is a class issue on one level, and a cultural issue on another. The hotels the Irish Hotels Federation is trying to reach are the two- and three-star ones, where everyone - kitchens and clients - is watching their wallet. Processed and fried is cheap, in many people's perceptions, while fresh, slow food means expensive.

Try explaining this mindset to an Italian. Anyone fortunate enough to have visited Italy with children has experienced the big family meal where children are honoured guests and tempted to try all the healthy foods on offer, while the kitchen is always ready with a plate of pasta for the fussy toddler. In Italy and France, children are encouraged to be adventurous with food in the same way that we like to encourage our children to read literature and get exercise. Gradually learning to eat a wider range of foods is part of every child's education. That's cultural.

But economics are also a part of it. The rip-off factor in Ireland isn't great for children's diets, when parents are paying too much for fresh food, both in supermarkets and in restaurants. I was in the US Bible Belt recently on a Sunday and was amazed how, after church, it seemed that every family was eating out - all three and four generations of them. The food was laughably affordable, even at Hooters - where children eat free on Sundays. Fresh salads, grilled meats, lots of low-fat, low-salt options. We need restaurants offering affordable, healthy family food. When you find one, let me know.