Skinny Mouse

Hey, Winnie the Pooh: You'd better get your head out of the honey jar. And memo to Ursula: Find yourself some littler mermaids to ingest. The animated sea witch is a bit too full-figured for the new, slimmed-down Disney. Robert Iger, the Mouse's big cheese, says that the Disney theme parks will be serving healthier food as part of a company-wide effort to promote better nutrition for children. While fries and artery-clogging turkey legs probably won't be going away anytime soon, the parks will offer options such as low-fat milk, 100% fruit juice, and carrot sticks in its meals targeted to kids.

Some parks have made half-hearted attempts to include healthier menu choices only to retreat back to gut-busting staples like chicken fingers, pizza, fries, and burgers because they claim that's what the public demands. That's a load of hooey. If parks offered fresh, great-tasting, reasonably priced, healthy fare (as opposed to the processed, mediocre-at-best, wildly overpriced, nutritionally suspect junk they generally pass off as food), guests would gladly chow it down.

Case in point: A couple of years ago, Walt Disney World made over its food court area in Epcot's The Land pavilion into the Sunshine Season Food Fair. Among the many stands offering salads, soups, pasta, fresh fruit, and other "fast casual" items, there isn't a burger to be found. And the popular place is teeming with kids who seem perfectly content with the burgerless menu.

As part of its culinary makeover, Disney says that it plans to eliminate all trans fats from its parks' restaurants over the next two years.

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