little Z at Taco Bell

I'm amazed at what major fast food restaurant chains serve children. Fat, sugar, starch, junk. I realize that the chains feed that to adults but adults are of course...adults... and they can eat what they like. But children ought to have something halfway healthy until they are old enough to choose to clog their arteries and rot their teeth.

I'll get back to the nutrition of it all later but consider this. Recently little Z and his parents and little sister came for a visit. It was getting late when they arrived so we opted to make a run for the Border. We walked in and I began to think, "What does a not-quite-two-year-old eat at Taco Bell? Tacos are way too messy, Nachos would be worse." Let's face it, adults have a hard enough time keeping all the taco ingredients in the shell long enough to eat, but when you're not quite two years old your hand/wrist/mouth dexterity doesn't allow you to eat a taco, just wear one. I asked the person behind the counter, "What do little kids eat at Taco Bell?" The "Children's Menu." Guess what's on the Children's Menu; Tacos.

Yes, little Z got the cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and hamburger all over the place--down the front of his shirt, on his bib, on his shorts, under his chair... yes he ended up wearing the taco, sitting on the taco, stepping in the taco... Taco Bell needs to come up with a little kid menu that is a little friendlier to little kids. When you go to Culver's you can at least give your little one a burger on a bun that you can tear up into bite size chunks. If you go to McD's you can get nuggets.

The other thing they give your kid at Taco Bell is cinnamon twists, basically styrofoam covered with sugar and cinnamon. They give you a lot of them, I guess so that when your kid's taco falls apart and is scattered everywhere the little guy can pick up something that stays together and makes the kid sticky and hyper.

Come on, give them a Mexican chicken peg leg, a stickerless cactus nugget, roasted rattlesnake on a stick... something they can hold in their hand and get to their mouth.