Burger King announced last week they’ll be reducing the sodium in meals for kids and in some items for adults in an effort to be, or appear, more healthy.

The nation’s No. 2 hamburger chain said it will now limit sodium in its kids meals advertised to children under 12 years old to 600 milligrams or less.

Virtually every major chain has rid the majority of its menu items, if not all of them, of trans fat, which raises the level of bad cholesterol in the body and can increase the risk of coronary heart disease. Others have added healthier items like salads and yogurt parfaits to their menus, partially marketing to moms looking for lower-calorie options when eating with their kids.

I have to say, I give them credit for at least trying. But really? They could do better.

Burger King and all fast-food chains can do what they like about adding ‘healthy’ to their menus. But after reading Fast Food Nation and watching Super Size Me, I think there are more issues to be addressed other than less sodium and the addition of more nutrients. Perhaps something along the lines of sanitation in the workplace and at the meatpacking plants, food preparation and the relentless advertising thrust at children.

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A few months ago I read a book called ‘The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl’ by Shauna Reid. She is an Australian woman, a couple of years younger than me, now living in Scotland. She wrote the book (and the blog it started out as) to chronicle her weight loss ‘adventure’ and it was a hilarious, touching story. She began her diet when she was tipping the scales at 351lbs and now weighs literally half that at 175.5lbs. I don’t read a lot of diet books so I can’t say whether or not this is not your average diet book, but I suspect it isn’t your average diet book. There’s a lot more to Shauna’s life than her battle with her weight, and all that extra stuff makes for some hilarious passages in her book. I could go on but I don’t want to sound too much like her pimp.

One of the things she talks about is her relationship with food as a young child, and the role her parents played in her weight gain. I’ve watched enough episodes of Oprah and Dr Phil to know that ‘eating issues’ are often established in childhood, and I have family members and school friends who can trace their weight problems back to their parents’ insistence that they finish everything on their plate before they could leave the table.

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