Seventy percent of families eat out at least once a week. If you can afford it, eating out is a way of having a pleasant and relaxed family time and getting that important family meal. Keep in mind that the first priority is having a meal. The second is the nutritional quality of the meal -- but you can have both. If you eat out rarely, you can afford to throw nutritional considerations to the winds and let your child order what he likes. If you eat out a lot, it’s worth setting up some simple guidelines to help him balance things out.

My suggestions are prescriptive, and here’s why. When your child chooses what he wants to eat in a restaurant, he takes over your job of meal planning (as in the division of responsibility in feeding). As a result, he needs guidelines for choosing what to eat. Not only that, but when he gets older he will be eating in restaurants on his own. If he learns these guidelines when he is little, he is likely to use them when he gets older.

• Try for three different food groups. This happens automatically anyway. A hamburger and a bun with French fries qualifies, as does pizza (crust, cheese, and topping). A salad, bread, and milk works, as does a taco (tortilla, meat, and vegetables).
• Limit sweets to one per meal. If your child has a milkshake or soda for his beverage, that counts as his sweet. However, if he chooses milk or water, he can still have dessert.
• Keep fried foods down to one per meal. For example, if your child has French fries and a hamburger, a fried pie for dessert will add up to too many fried foods. To have the fried pie, he would have to skip the French fries, and in order to fill up, he might need a second hamburger. Grilled foods such as hamburgers don’t count as fried foods because they are relatively low in fat compared with French fries, chicken nuggets, and fish sandwiches, which are starchy and deep-fried. The starch soaks up more fat. This guideline is a bit rigid when you consider pairing chicken nuggets and French fries, so take it for what it is worth. The best rules get broken.
• Keep dessert portions child-size, just as you would at home. That might mean splitting a dessert with someone else at the table, or ordering a sundae rather than a banana split.
• Don’t feel obligated to order from children’s menus, which are typically limited. Instead, consider the appetizers or a la carte menu. Split meals, or plan to take some home from an adult portion.
• Lay out cost limits ahead of time, then let your older child cope. Order bread and let him fill up on that if he doesn’t like what he ordered.
• Expect and enforce positive mealtime behavior. You owe it to the other diners.

You have my blessings for applying these guidelines in fast food places as well as regular restaurants. I do not agree with the food cops who wax hysterical about eating out in general and fast-food restaurants in particular. You and your child get most of your emotional and nutritional benefit from sharing a family meal. There is a world of difference between sitting around a table enjoying your fast-food meal together compared with whipping through the drive-through and throwing a paper bag into the back seat.