Fast-food toy ban no aid to nutrition, study says

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Source: SF Chronicle

Santa Clara County's ban on fast-food toys for kids has had no effect on the nutritional quality of the meals served there, but the restaurants are doing a better job of promoting the right food, or at least not promoting the junk, Stanford researchers say.

In a report published today, Stanford scientists found that Santa Clara County fast-food restaurants - unlike some of their peers in San Francisco, where restaurants got around a similar ban by charging a dime for toys - seem to have stopped promoting their fat- and salt-laden children's meals with toys.

Parents can still buy the toys for a few dollars, but posters or other marketing materials in the stores have been stripped away. In one restaurant, a healthy children's meal is now the only one that comes with a free toy.

"I was happy to see that the restaurants were taking steps in positive and meaningful directions," said Jennifer Otten, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford's Prevention Research Center and lead author of the study, which is published online in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/08/MNJR1M9LUC.DTL