Plenty has been written lately about the quality of American school lunches. Far too often, cafeterias offer lousy, non-nutritious choices — hamburgers, pizza, chicken fingers and corndogs — as regular menu items. Political figures (Michelle Obama), celebrity chefs (Jamie Oliver) and local journalists like The New Mexican's own Rob DeWalt and Robert Nott have attempted to draw attention to the quality of school meals in hope of improving them. Late last year, Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

But even if we're successful at improving school lunches, we might be undoing that good when we go out to dinner. The culprit? The children's menu, which outspoken New York restaurateur Nicola Marzovilla has termed "the death of civilization." More often than not, it's a predictable list of fatty, carby, cheesy foods with colors that fall somewhere on the beige-gold-brown spectrum — namely, the hamburgers, pizza, chicken fingers and corndogs you were trying to get off you kids' plate at lunch.

Children's menus are disappointing and kind of insulting. Setting aside the palate-numbing capabilities of their typically bland selections, they assume kids want nothing more than fatty breaded junk and suggest to tikes that the food they eat is somehow different than "grown-up" food. Kids don't really know how to distinguish between a healthy meal and a less-healthy one, so why do menus designed for them consist mostly of nutritionally void choices? According to some sources, Americans eat about 30 percent of their meals in restaurants, so how will our kids not keep getting fat if we encourage them to eat this way? And won't menus like this just encourage kids to expect the same sort of junk at school and at home?

Not to get all Andy Rooney about it, but when I was a kid, most of the restaurants my parents preferred didn't have a kiddie menu. For the most part, we grew up eating what our parents ate, at home and elsewhere.

Now, I'm not about to start telling parents what to feed their kids, and anyway, talking about what kids should eat is easier than putting it into practice. For parents trying to instill in their kids a love of good, real food, kids' menus might just be making the job more difficult.

Parents don't want to spend a rare night out arguing with their kids about what they should eat. I know moms and dads appreciate the kid-friendly gesture of a colorful — or often colorable — menu with games and puzzles, but what if it just invites little ones to order tan, fatty, starchy, cheesy food? Is it possible to have a menu that's fun without being pandering?

The kids' menu certainly has an appeal when it comes to price: There's a reason the Happy Meal is so popular. No one wants to pay $20 for an entrée that little Bobby refuses to eat. Offering small portions of regular menu items — with accordingly reduced prices — seems like a reasonable solution.

Last fall, as a part of her campaign to end childhood obesity, Michelle Obama addressed the National Restaurant Association, suggesting that restaurants provide healthier alternatives for children. "I want to challenge every restaurant to offer healthy menu options and then provide them up front so that parents don't have to hunt around and read the small print to find an appropriately sized portion that doesn't contain ... high levels of fat, salt and sugar," she said.

Have Santa Fe restaurants heard the call? Though the usual food suspects still have starring roles, several local dining establishments include nutritious — and sometimes adventurous — options.

Cleopatra's Café takes two steps forward by offering kids eastern Mediterranean specialties like spanakopita ... and then one step back by including chicken nuggets, a corndog, "MacCheese" and pizza (really?) that's served with fries.

Pyramid Café offers a kebab or grilled chicken with rice, pasta with chicken and small pizzas.

Zia Diner's menu runs the gamut from a burger and chicken "tenders," both of which come with fries, to a Caesar salad and a pasta with veggies and olive oil or marinara. Fruit, vegetables and beans figure prominently on the list of sides.

Harry's Roadhouse bows to the carb-and-cheese gods by offering grilled cheese, nachos and chicken fingers, but their rather lengthy list of choices for kiddies also includes pasta with marinara, grilled chicken with rice and broccoli and a Caesar salad.

At Cowgirl BBQ, the kids' menu also includes predictable fare — mac and cheese, a grilled cheese and a corndog. But they also serve smaller versions of "grown-up" dishes on the regular menu: grilled salmon and chicken and barbecued ribs and brisket.

"We take kids seriously," one employee told me.

Santa Fe is known as a culinary destination serving a wide variety of cuisine to full-time and temporary residents alike. I'm happy to see we're doing a decent job of offering variety to our little ones, too, and of meeting the goal set forth by first lady Michelle Obama of "(making) sure that every family that walks into a restaurant can make an easy, healthy choice."

Laurel Gladden is a freelance writer in Santa Fe. Contact her at the.ethical.epicure@gmail.com.