After a two-decade rise, the rate of childhood obesity possibly hit a plateau last year, unless it's a temporary rest stop full of kids punching in vending codes for another couple candy bars. Now results from a survey of recent restaurant habits of 3,500 households and 500 teenagers backs up that plateau, revealing a healthier shift in kids' eating preferences. This survey has been conducted annually since 1976, and is considered highly reliable.

Here's the skinny on skinnier kid restaurant trends:

• Kid orders of cold-cut sandwich are up 11 percent -- thanks Subway.
  
• Colas are down 10 percent, chicken nuggets (8 percent), fries (7 percent) and hot dogs (6 percent).
  
• Follow that good news with this -- soup is up 29 percent, grilled chicken sandwiches (26 percent), yogurt (21 percent), carrots (9 percent) and fruit (6 percent).

Granted, pizza, burgers and fries are still king on the kid menu, but there's a real shift toward healthier ordering. Burger King even has three new kid meals with sliced-apple faux French fries. The food industry can no longer make the claim they're simply serving what the market demands. Children's health researchers were right, if restaurants offer healthier stuff, Mikey will eat it. Don't forget the parents of toddlers either, they make the ordering decisions, and many want convenience foods capable of programming young tastebuds toward a lifetime of healthy.

My kids love Subway, apple sides and the youngest prefers white milk over soda. They see my husband and I regularly ordering fast food salads on car trips or grilled whatever in a restaurant. Perhaps they'll mature into salad-loving, fried-less adults, confident they can enter a restaurant and order a delicious 800-calorie meal instead of a 2,000-calorie bomb. To all fast or slower restaurants out there, listen to children's health researchers and keep building a healthier menu -- the market is responding. Let's face it, consistently eating less is the real answer to return to the single-digit childhood obesity rates of the 1960s. Today, 32 percent of American schoolchildren are overweight or obese.

Have your family's fast-food habits changed recently? Or does healthy eating still mean eating at home?