The Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza has about 600 calories in it. Maybe slightly indulgent, but that is a very reasonable reward and trade off for getting kids to read more.
People troll too much with their low effort comments. The thing was tiny, but it was a cool reward as a kid. I may be mistaekn but there was a limit too, it was either one per week or once a month.
I wasn't trolling. It was just an attempt to highlight something.
this is a conversation about habit building.
Do you think that pizza hut was doing this because of their love of reading?
Is eating pizza regularly the good habit to build? Is using food as a reward a good habit? It's not good to associate eating foods with that elation that a child gets when they "win the prize" -- that's how people have issues later when their brain associates the two states.
> Do you think that pizza hut was doing this because of their love of reading?
Probably not; they really just wanted to make sure they didn't get out pizzaed.
> Is eating pizza regularly the good habit to build?
Pizza is a fairly balanced food, depending on toppings. Generally some protein, some vegetables. Macronutrient wise, it's a bit carb heavy, but not overwhelmingly so. Usually not a lot of added sugar, unless you're having a BBQ pizza, and not that much natural sugar either; some places might put more sugar into the pizza sauce though.
> Is using food as a reward a good habit?
No, probably not. But free food is a pretty effective motivator, so people use it.
> Pizza is a fairly balanced food, depending on toppings. Generally some protein, some vegetables. Macronutrient wise, it's a bit carb heavy, but not overwhelmingly so. Usually not a lot of added sugar, unless you're having a BBQ pizza, and not that much natural sugar either; some places might put more sugar into the pizza sauce though.
Just because there's comparatively little sugar in pizza, does not make it a fairly balanced food. It's high in fat and consequently high in calories. Case in point: that personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut is the size of a man's palm and has around 600 calories. 600! For a young child, that tiny thing alone is a third of the total recommended [1] daily calory intake. My son is 10, and he could probably eat 4 or 5 of these suckers easily.
Taking data from Pizza Hut [1], per Pepperoni - Personal Pan Pizza® Slice, there are 7 grams fat, 17 grams carbohydrates, 6 grams protein. Per slice is kind of silly, but we can analyze balance regardless. I picked Pepperoni based on perceived popularity, not to cherry pick.
At standard ratios [2], that's 63 kcal from fat, 68 from carbs, 24 from protein. Or
41% fat, 44% carb, 15% protein. Your resource suggests 25-35% calories from fat, so it's not that far off the goal. I'm not saying it's well balanced, just that it's fairly balanced.
> For a young child, that tiny thing alone is a third of the total recommended daily calory intake.
A third of the total recommended intake sounds appropriate for a meal?
> My son is 10, and he could probably eat 4 or 5 of these suckers easily.
Ok, but he's got to read 4 or 5 books for that, and maybe over several weeks? I'm not really sure how to address this. If you are going to eat 4 complete personal pizzas if available, then you probably should avoid them.
I would argue that those of us raised in the 80's turned out on average significantly better than today's crop of kids who are taught to fear everything and/or treat everything with drugs.
It's not that people troll too much with low effort comments.
It's that low effort comments are followed by troll-lighting the original commenter as the troll, downvoting their post, upvoting ones own. That is - often the biggest troll in the room is the one accusing others of trolling.
And it was a brilliant marketing gimmick too. The kid would need their family to bring them, and siblings & parents would probably pick up some drinks (fountain drinks are what, 90% margin?) or their own food that they might not have otherwise ordered out that night.
+1 this was a really neat carrot. In retrospect I am thankful for these carrots as they boost curiosity and self-learning, without much harm. People are going to eat out anyhow, what's the harm in marketing that also supports good behavior?