Hey! Pass me that kids’ meal!

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You can slap a cartoon character on them, but that doesn’t mean kids’ meals are kid friendly. Those chicken strips/nuggets/chunks and French fries add up in the calorie department.

As USA Today writes: ‘The first comprehensive report on kids’ meals at popular fast-food and chain restaurants finds the servings are far too high in calories for a single meal.’

Here’s the original report from, who else, the Center for Science in the Public Interest. It says that 93% of 1,474 possible choices (those combo meals make for a lot of options) at 13 chain restaurants exceed 430 calories -- one-third of what the Institute of Medicine recommends daily for children ages 4 through 8. In fact, some of the meals pack in more than 1,000 calories. (It’s pretty hard for a kid to consume 1,000 calories of broccoli or carrots in a sitting, so we’re obviously not talking health food here.) The report gave particularly low marks to Chili’s, relatively high marks to Subway.

But just try finding exactly how many calories your kid should be eating -- and how much he or she is actually getting. It isn’t easy.

So start here: This calorie calculator, courtesy of about.com, factors in not just a child’s gender and age but also activity level. (Calorie-Counter.net also offers daily-calorie recommendations broken down by age group and gender, but it doesn’t take exercise into account. Thus, its daily-calorie recommendations can be significantly higher. And don’t kid yourself -- that matters.)

Now on to a fast-food meal. Calorie-Count.com offers a listing of restaurants and their offerings, but it can be easier just to go straight to the restaurant’s website. Let’s take Rubio’s. It’s not in the CSPI report, but I was recently assured by a non-adult of my acquaintance that the offerings were not fast food because the building lacked a drive-through.

Take the cheese quesadilla kids meal, for instance. The quesadilla has 360 calories, a small side of rice has 100 calories and the mini-churro has 80 calories. That brings us to 540 calories -- high for an 8-year-old, but about a third of what a lot of adults need for the day. (I’m ignoring the soda.)

Now let’s compare it to the stand-alone cheese quesadilla marketed to grown-ups and all other ‘nonkids’: 890 calories. No mini-churro. No rice or chips or beans. Just 890 calories.

So the question of why kids’ meals aren’t healthier is just the beginning. What I want to know is: Why can’t we all get kids’ meals?

-- Tami Dennis