An inspection of children’s meals at various chain restaurants found that none met nutritional requirements, the Consumer Protection Committee said.
The committee said nutritionists from Taipei City’s Gandau Hospital inspected 18 children’s meals from chain restaurants, comparing the food with the daily nutrition standard set for first to third graders.
They analyzed the total calories, fats, sugar, sodium and nutritional balance — meals made up of meat, beans, fish, eggs and dairy products, fruit and vegetables — in each meal.
The calories in 15 meals exceeded the recommended calorie intake per meal for children — 670 calories.
The meal containing the most calories was nearly the maximum recommended daily intake suggested for first to third graders — 1,650 to 2,100 calories.
“Of the 18 restaurants inspected, five are affiliated with Wowprime Corp and the calories from a kids’ meal at Tasty is about the amount of a child’s daily calorie intake,” senior consumer ombudsman Wang Te-ming (王德明) said, adding that Tasty’s children’s meal contained 1,699 calories.
An analysis of total fats, sugar and sodium showed that each venue had 15 meals that exceed recommended daily intake.
A meal at Goodday Mexican restaurant contained fats that were 4.5 times (98.7g) the recommended amount for children; and the same meal contained 2,300mg of sodium, about the same as the recommended maximum sodium intake per day for an adult,” Wang said.
A children’s meal at Swensen’s contained the highest amount of sugar — 42.7g, exceeding the recommended amount of no more than 8.375g per meal for children.
In terms of nutritional balance, 10 meals provided excessive beans, meat, fish, eggs and dairy products, 17 meals provided insufficient vegetables and 10 meals lacked fruit.
“Only 10 restaurants included fruit in their children’s meals and only seven provided juice, which might cause excessive sugar intake if the juice is concentrated,” ombudsman Chang Yu-ling (張羽伶) said.
She said three restaurants have already modified their menus after the inspection, and another five restaurants affiliated with Wowprime said they would modify their menus after the Lunar New Year holiday.
Parents should order food rather than choose set meals for children, and to be aware of excessive intake of fats, sugar and sodium, Wang said.
Chang said if children eat too much in one meal, parents should adjust the amount of their food at other meals that day.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,