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Healthy Children’s Meal Beverages
In 2022, Illinois adopted new requirements for healthy children’s meal beverages.
Many kids consume 2-3 times the recommended amount of sugar every day. This can negatively impact their weight, mood, and behavior, while increasing their risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes later in life.
Restaurants providing healthier options will help ensure additional choices are available and included for free as part of the default children’s meal package. These choices may include unsweetened water, milk, or 100% juice as the default beverages in children’s meals.
These requirements are checked by local health departments during inspections of retail food establishments.