Children’s Menus at Fast Food Restaurants on the Uber Eats® Delivery App

TL;DR

Fast food children's menus on Uber Eats in Santiago are mostly unhealthy, with most scoring poorly on a nutrition scale.

Contribution

The study evaluates children's menus on Uber Eats using the KIMEHS score, revealing widespread poor nutritional quality.

Findings

71% of children's menus included fried or processed meat with French fries.

99% of menus scored the lowest on the KIMEHS, labeled 'not healthy at all'.

Chips were strongly associated with the lowest KIMEHS scores.

Abstract

Objectives: To evaluate the offer of children’s menus offered in fast food restaurants present in the Uber Eats delivery application through the Kids Menu Healthy Score ‘KIMEHS’ in Greater Santiago. Methods: Observational, descriptive, cross-sectional. Research in fast food restaurants present in the Uber Eats delivery app. A total of 858 restaurants were selected. The KIMEHS was used to assess menu quality. KIMEHS index and descriptive statistics were calculated. Results: 558 restaurants were evaluated through the app; 57 offered children’s menus, yielding 114 children’s menu options from 18 different municipalities. The common offer was based on fried and/or processed lean meat accompanied by French fries in 71%. Moreover, 99% of the menus assessed obtained the minimum score in the KIMEHS placing them in the ‘not healthy at all’ category. When associations were made between foods and the lowest KIMEHS score quartile, the presence of chips had the strongest association (OR; 40.36: CI95% 11.43–201.08). Conclusions: Most restaurants offer a children’s menu of low nutritional quality and poor balance, where their dishes are commonly based on fried and processed products, pointing to the urgent need for legislation on guidelines to be applied on the different actors influencing the food offered to children.

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