When Alton Brown headlined the Charlotte Shout festival last year, most in the crowd expected him to come on stage in his usual chef's whites and launch into one of his much-beloved food-geek cooking demonstrations. There was a bit of grumbling when he, like Tony Bourdain the year before, came on in street clothes holding only a microphone.

What he had to say, though, soon had the crowd quiet.

The talk covered a wide menu, but what caught my ear the most was what he had to say about feeding your kids, especially at restaurants. Have you looked at a kid's menu lately? I think there must be some behind-the-scenes deal among the restaurants, some decision that every single one will sell what's essentially a slightly amped-up version of a Happy Meal (cheeseburger/hamburger/chicken nuggets with fries and a drink) with occasional detours into pseudo-ethnic specialties. Italian chains, for instance, will serve spaghetti and a Tex-Mex chain might offer a cheese quesadilla made with authentic pasteurized processed cheese food.

The one hopeful sign, and again this is in response to the fast-food chains, is in side items. Denny's, for example, now has things like fresh grapes and a fruit medley alongside the traditional fries and mashed potatoes.

But all this is looking at the problem from the wrong angle. Kids don't learn healthful eating habits at restaurants, they learn them at home. I'll confess, I have a sack of fish sticks in the freezer just like most of the rest of you, to be deployed on those nights when all Hades breaks loose and there's no time to cook a proper meal. However, those are the exception, not the rule.

Want your kids to learn to eat well? Here are two easy tips:

Don't Be A Diner: I heard an acquaintance a few days ago bemoaning her kids' refusal to eat what she'd cooked for dinner. "I just don't know what to do. They wouldn't eat the chicken breast so I microwaved some steak fingers so they wouldn't go hungry."

Friends, this is letting the inmates run the asylum. (OK, so more often it's we parents who should be the inmates, but work with me here.) If you let your kids dictate the menu, be prepared to buy Kraft mac and cheese by the pallet and chicken nuggets by the truckload. I'm not saying you should serve bizarre or overly spicy foods and expect the kids to eat them, but they've got to know that they will either eat what's for dinner or go without for a night. With the kind of hypercaloric slop they're fed for school lunches, this will not lead to starvation.

Please note that I am not in any way a child psychiatrist; I am simply working from my own and others' experiences with this issue.

Practice What You Preach: This is the part that will help you, too. If you want your kids to eat good, balanced meals, you need to set the example. When my partner and I sit down and eat dinner with my older son, there's rarely a complaint. We're all eating the same food, and when he sees us enjoying it, that more often than not will prompt him to at the very least try new foods or new preparations. Our rule is that he must at least taste any new dish. He doesn't have to eat it all, but the "I don't like it" based on appearance alone won't be allowed.

You'll need to set an example not just with what you eat, but how. I had a bad habit of taking fairly gargantuan bites from time to time until the first time I noticed son Alex watching me eat, with a monster bite on his own fork. "Do as I say, not as I do" is anathema to me, and I found myself modifying my own behavior quickly.

And you know what? I'm now eating less, because it takes longer to eat.

Alex is eating better, I'm eating less, and the fish sticks are rapidly approaching freezer-burned status.

Will we never call out for pizza again? Highly unlikely. But if we do, at least we'll eat it together.