Healthy Children’s Meals Model Policies

Restaurants use children’s meals to market to families and young children. These meals offer smaller portion sizes, but they also often include unhealthy foods and beverages. Communities interested in improving the nutritional content of children's meals sold at local restaurants can adopt legislation to encourage healthier food choices.

ChangeLab Solutions developed a suite of healthy children’s meals model ordinances:

• Model Healthy Children’s Meals Ordinance provides local governments with a way to steer restaurants toward providing healthier options for children by setting nutrition standards for foods and beverages in children’s meals.
• Model Ordinance: Healthy Beverages in Children’s Meals provides local governments with an option to set nutrition standards for the beverages sold with children’s meals.
• Model Statute: Healthy Beverages in Children’s Meals provides states with an option to set nutrition standards for the beverages sold with children’s meals.

Using these models, communities can choose to regulate the nutritional quality of either the entire children’s meal or the beverages served to children as part of a children’s meal. Communities can also choose to require children’s meals to include only certain items or to change the default options offered but allow consumers to choose other options at no cost.

We also offer sample implementation and enforcement clauses that can be adopted for use in model ordinances.