As a pretty big fan of perfectly cooked pancakes, extra crispy bacon and eggs with only a slight crisp around the edge, I frequent IHOP. A lot. On the morning of my departure back to Binghamton after spring break 2.0, my dad and I went there for brunch. Usually, I don’t shy away from items on the menu that contain an unlimited supply of grease, but with my four-hour bus ride rapidly approaching, I decided to get something a little more pleasing to my stomach.
I flipped to the “Just for Kids” section and was instantly intrigued by the “Rooty Jr.,” a cheaper spin-off of the original menu item, “The Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity.”
Not only did the name sound appetizing, but the contents as well. It came with one pancake, one egg cooked any style, one bacon strip, one sausage link and even some fresh fruit and whipped cream atop the pancake. It had everything I loved from IHOP, but with half the grease and for half the price.
The “Rooty Jr.” seemed like the perfect fit for both my budget and my stomach on that particular day. That is, until my waiter announced it was only available for children under the age of 12.
My initial thought was to pretend I was still in that age group, as I had done for many years in other restaurants (suckers). But now that I am a mature 19-year-old, trying to pretend to be — at most — 12 years of age would just have been embarrassing.
So instead, after much consideration, I gave my waiter an ultimatum: “Rooty Jr. or die.”
Unfortunately, either my threat was pretty weak, or he just didn’t give a shit, so he scribbled “Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity” down on his note pad.
Why, and how, is it possible to have age limits on menu items?
Second, not giving people an option to order less food is only contributing to our increasing obesity epidemic.
And third, getting a bigger portion than one can finish will lead to perfectly good food in the trash.
Despite the questionable legality of refusing someone the right to order a certain meal, restaurants that have strict, kids-only menu items are just plain wasteful. While it may help some owners on a microeconomic level, it only hurts America’s economy as a whole. The Environmental Protection Agency, on its website, claims that the United States produces 34 million tons of food waste every year.
Not only does the wasting of food, well, waste food, and hurt our economy, but it also negatively affects our environment.
Pissed about the increase in gas prices? You may be able to blame food wasters for that. A study, The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental Impact, found that “food waste now accounts for more than 300 million barrels of oil per year,” and “aside from the significant squandering of fossil fuel resources and freshwater, the food waste is further contributing to climate change via the methane produced by the wasted food rotting in landfills.”
The effects of wasting food are so varied and traumatizing to our planet that we must put an end to it. Though some damaging human habits are hard to break, the problem of restaurants restricting customers from ordering specific kids only items is extremely unnecessary and easy to fix.
So the next time you get away with ordering a kid’s meal, congrats. You’re saving the world.