Food writer Lindsey Nair

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My nephews, Jacob and Isaiah, are very close in age yet worlds apart in their food preferences.

I've seen Jacob, 4, eat pepperoncinis and crack crab claws with the adults, while Isaiah, 5, subsists on a diet of spaghetti, chicken tenders and pancakes.

Of the two, I'll bet Isaiah's preferences are more like the average little kid's. That's why, when you look at children's menus at most restaurants, the offerings usually read something like this: chicken tenders, spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, burgers, hot dogs, grilled cheese or peanut butter and jelly.

Elena Serrano, a professor of nutrition at Virginia Tech, first realized the limitations of children's menus while pregnant with her first child, who is now 4. She wondered just how nutritious these kids' meals are and whether many parents really care about healthier choices.

"After I had my older son, I thought, this is something that is really important to me," she said. "He really is actually a pretty healthy eater. [But] if he wanted to eat healthier [in restaurants], it would be really difficult for him."

Being the kind of scientist who likes research that leads to positive change, she saw this as an opportunity. In 2005, she launched a study into the nutrient content of restaurant kids' meals.

Although the study is not yet complete, analysis of children's dishes at fast-food and non-fast-food restaurants has already resulted in a surprising conclusion: If you want your kids to eat healthier food in restaurants, you're better off taking them to a fast-food joint.

Dissecting the meals

Serrano, with help from research associate Virginia Jedda and several students, took a three-pronged approach to her study.

First, they analyzed the nutritional content of the meals. Then they interviewed restaurant managers about what motivates them when they are planning a children's menu. Now, they are conducting discussion groups with parents.

For the purpose of the study, Serrano and her staff identified 33 restaurants in Blacksburg that offered menus marketed to kids. Ten of those restaurants were fast-food restaurants and 23 were not.

No fast-food restaurant was repeated in the study because the researchers figured corporate chains have pretty standardized menus.

They ordered 120 different meal combinations from the restaurants and transported them back to the laboratory in to-go containers. Before starting the nutritional analysis, investigators questioned restaurant cooks about exactly how they prepared the meals.

Were the tenders baked or fried? What kind of cheese did they use on a grilled cheese? Was the bread grilled with butter, margarine or oil? How much was used?

Finally, the researchers had to dissect all of the foods so that different components of each dish could be measured and analyzed separately. This involved actually pulling apart burgers, de-breading chicken tenders and rinsing the sauce off spaghetti noodles.

Serrano said the smell of chicken tenders permeated the entire building for about two months.

"I think the comment in our building was that none of us had any desire ... to eat chicken tenders again," she said with a chuckle.

In the end, the staff reached these conclusions:

n Non-fast-food restaurants serve bigger portions than fast-food restaurants.

n When portion sizes were matched, the non-fast-food options still had more calories and fat than the healthiest options available at fast-food joints.

n Comparisons between the healthiest options at non-fast-food restaurants and the least healthy options at fast-food places resulted in about equal results.

What does this all mean?

Well, studies have shown that children over the age of 3 ate 33 percent more food when they were served a larger portion, so Serrano and crew worry about those big serving sizes at non-fast-food eateries.

Also, it seems, based on the research, that fast-food restaurants are offering healthier side dishes, such as mandarin oranges or apple slices with dip, than their sit-down counterparts.

"Fast-food restaurants are really being blamed for the obesity epidemic and they are having fingers pointed at them," Serrano said, "and I think what they did was they responded really well and said, 'Okay, we will provide healthier options for people.' "

What influences parents?

Do restaurant managers really care if their kids' meals are healthy? The Virginia Tech study so far shows they haven't in the past, but they might be willing to change.

Interviews with restaurant managers revealed that nutrition has been pretty low on their radar as they've developed kids' menus. More important to them are the ease of preparation, the popularity of the foods and the ability to let certain ingredients play double duty on the children's and adult menus. Children's meals comprise a pretty measly percentage of sales -- less than 10 percent at most restaurants, the study shows.

In the end, more than 70 percent of the managers interviewed said they would be interested in improving the healthfulness of their offerings for kids.

At this point, Serrano and her summer assistant, junior nutrition major Divya Mohan, are looking for parents who are willing to speak openly about how they make choices for their kids when dining out.

"Basically, we are looking to identify what motivates parents when they are eating out," Mohan said. "Is it cost, convenience, the nutritional values of the menus? What do they think about children's menus and how much does it influence their decision to eat out?"

It could be that when parents take their children out to eat, they consider it a treat and are not very concerned about having healthy options, Serrano said. Already they suspect that parents who eat out more often are actually less concerned about nutritional quality.

Another possibility is that most kids won't choose the healthier foods even if they are available.

What Serrano and Mohan learn in the focus groups will dictate how they proceed with the study.

Because both focus groups so far were made up of parents with expendable income, Mohan said she would like to talk to parents with limited incomes to see how their attitudes differ.

At some point, Serrano hopes to take what she learns back to restaurants and try to effect some change in thinking about how they feed their littlest customers.

"This is part of a process we can take," she said, "to make the food environment better for kids."

Are you interested in participating in a parents' focus group for the study? If so, contact Divya Mohan at d1vya@vt.edu (that's a numeral one, not a lower case "L," after the "d" in the address) or 231-4900. You must reside in Blacksburg or Christiansburg to take part.