According to a study conducted by several researchers, having a fast food restaurant around the corner can increase your chances of obesity by 5.2 percent. Convenience of fast foods has outweighed the risk of disease like obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular health problems. More so, popularity of fast food with younger generations has become inevitable. Most children in America are able to recognize McDonald's even before they learn how to speak according to Partners for Your Health. With this finding, New York is pushing for stricter regulations when it comes to children's food.
The New York City Council is set to consider the "Healthy Happy Meals" bill which would require children's meal that comes with toys to limit the calories, fats, sugar and sodium content as reported in Forbes. This move is an en effort to reduce children obesity by targeting meals sold in fast food restaurants specifically aimed at children.
The study is based on 422 children's meal purchases made by 358 adults who provided receipts to researchers. Average age of children consuming the meal was 7. The meal includes a main course, side item, a drink and a toy. Researchers then discovered that each meal contains an average of 600 calories, 36 percent of which were from fat. There's also a staggering discovery of 869 milligrams of sodium in each meal and 98 percent did not meet the proposed nutrition criteria. More than half exceeded the limit for calories, sodium, calories from fat while 14 percent exceeded limit for saturated fat and 49 percent exceeded limit for added sugars.
Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center conducted a study of the kids meals at McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's and found that the legislation would greatly improve the fight against childhood obesity. "We found that kids that were ordering children's meals, if the provisions in this bill were met, would save about 54 calories," Dr. Brian Elbel of NYU Langone Medical Center told CBS News. "That's almost a 10 percent reduction in calories," he said. Elbel also added that, "We need to think of a number of policies happening at the same time. This bill could be a step in the right direction."
The Healthy Happy Meals bill, proposed by NYC council member Benjamin Kallos, would require that fast-food meals marketed with toys or other merchandise meant for kids include a serving of fruit, vegetables or whole grain, with no more than 35% of calories coming from fat. Furthermore, the meals must contain fewer than 10% of calories from saturated fat or added sugar, and they can't have more than 600 milligrams of sodium.
