Kids' menus encourage narrow choices

I felt bad reading this - my son used to eat what we ate, but as he got older (he's 7 now), he prefers the stuff traditionally found on the kids menu and I haven't done much to discourage him. I'm going to male a real effort to encourage both kids to try what we're eating, or at least vary what they choose. But I'm happy to see that some restaurants are bucking the trend, though they seem to be mostly at the high end of the scale. Below is the link and an excerpt:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/dining/30kids.html

May 30, 2007
NY Times
De Gustibus
Don’t Point That Menu at My Child, Please
By DAVID KAMP

It seems like such a wonderful concept when you encounter it for the first time as a parent. You go to a restaurant as a family, are seated and given menus, and the waitress cheerfully turns to your children and exclaims, “And these are for you!” Their own special menus — kids’ menus! Sometimes these are little laminated things, peewee facsimiles of what Mom and Dad are holding. Sometimes these are placemats that not only tell you what foods are available but also contain mazes and word-search puzzles.

No matter what, the menu offers chicken fingers with French fries. And typically, as you go down the list, macaroni and cheese, a hot dog, a hamburger, grilled cheese and some kind of pizza.

Early in my tenure as a parent, I thought children’s menus were the greatest thing, a quantum leap forward in the human condition . . . my outlook on children’s menus started to change at some point — probably around the 102nd or 103rd time my children ordered chicken fingers with French fries. Even if the chicken fingers were good ones, made from real breast meat rather than pulverized and remolded chik-a-bits, I was disturbed by their ubiquity and their hold on my kids, who are 11 and 8 years old.