If you’re a kid, it just got harder for you to get a soft drink at Burger King.
The fast food chain is following in the stead of McDonald’s and Wendy’s by removing soft drinks from its kids menu boards and instead offering fat-free milk, 100 percent apple juice and low-fat chocolate milk. It quietly made the change in February with no prior announcement.
A number of other popular chain restaurants — including Panera, Arby’s and Subway — already offer healthier drinks as the default beverage on kids’ menus.
Burger King’s decision was made “as part of our ongoing effort to offer our guests options that match lifestyle needs,” according to a statement byAlex Macedo, president of Burger King North America, to USA Today.
The Affordable Care Act requires most restaurant chains and vending machines to label food products with caloric information. But for several years, restaurants have also been making moves toward offering healthier meals as they’ve been criticized by health advocates for contributing to the country’s high obesity rates.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest and the activist group Moms Rising have recently focused on urging restaurants to remove soft drinks from kids menus.
“Ensuring that our children can make healthy choices is an important part of raising them,” saidMonifa Bandale, a director at MomsRising.org. “When restaurants offer up sugary drinks as a default choice, it undermines those efforts. While Burger King is now offering better default beverages, we need more restaurants to do the same because sugar-sweetened beverages uniquely promote heart disease and type 2 diabetes.”
