Remove empty categories from magento menu

Question

I want my main menu to not include any categories that are empty. I\'ve done this for the layered navigation very easily in the relevant phtml file by using

Answer 1

path: app/design/frontend/rwd/default/template/page/html/topmenu/renderer.phtml

Make this query (it is 0.0004 sec), under the foreach ($children as $child) {

$mageconnection = Mage::getSingleton("core/resource")->getConnection("core_read");

$query="select count(cataloginventory_stock_item.is_in_stock) as subcount,catalog_category_flat_store_1.`name` from catalog_category_flat_store_1 INNER JOIN
    catalog_category_product_index on catalog_category_product_index.category_id=catalog_category_flat_store_1.entity_id INNER JOIN
    cataloginventory_stock_item on cataloginventory_stock_item.product_id=catalog_category_product_index.product_id
    where cataloginventory_stock_item.is_in_stock=1 and catalog_category_product_index.category_id=";

$subCatqueryId =  str_replace('category-node-', '', $child->getId());
$prodCollection = $mageconnection->fetchAll("$query'{$subCatqueryId}'");

if($prodCollection[0]["subcount"] > 0) {

$child->setLevel($childLevel);
$child->setIsFirst($counter == 1);
// these are the existing code ..
...
...
  $counter++;
}
}

It is very fast and secure way to control product count.