The Average Full Service Restaurant Meal Contains a Full Day's Worth of Calories!

Very straight forward study out of Drexel University.

Nutrient profiles for 21 chain full-service sit-down restaurants' 2,615 items were compiled and then some basic math to calculate caloric averages.

A standard adult meal consisting of a shared appetizer and an entree with a side dish averaged 1,495 calories and rose to 2,020 calories after including a beverage and a shared dessert.

And apparently we're going to restaurants twice as often as we did back in the late 1970s.

Eating out is a truly wonderful indulgence, but please, try to do so for occasions only, and Fridays (or any other day of the week) aren't in and of themselves occasions.

An Actually Healthy Restaurant?

Maybe it is possible.

This one's in Tokyo and it was designed by the Tanita scale corporation.

According to this tiny news item,

"Each table is fitted with a weighing scale to ensure healthy portions can be measured out, while a timer tells the diner when the optimum duration of 20 minutes for completing their lunch is over. Professional dieticians are also on hand to provide free advice on eating regimes in a special counselling room."

Sounds fabulous to me (other than that weird timer thing).

The Heart Attack Grill Is Not The Problem

Yesterday there was another national news report about someone having a heart attack while eating at the Heart Attack Grill and while I understand the juicy and ironic lure of the story, I have to ask, is the Heart Attack Grill really the problem?   I'm quite certain heart attacks at restaurants aren't unique to burger joints.

I'm actually kind of fond of the Heart Attack Grill, because unlike virtually every other restaurant around, at least they're up front about the risks of regularly visiting. Yet I'm guessing the calories in their flatliner fries and their triple bypass burger aren't any higher than those found in their Five Guys' or Carl's Jr.'s counterparts, and that the Heart Attack Grill's Coca-Cola's pretty much the same as everyone else's as well.  And yes, as ABC's shoot from the hip Dr. Richard Besser (I'm a big fan BTW) pointed out to me yesterday, they do have an 8,000 or so calorie burger, but yet so do so many other restaurants with shock value, get-your-picture-on-the-wall-if-you-can-eat it meals.

The problem isn't inherent to the Heart Attack Grill. It's also not the other umpteen-gazillion restaurants out there. The problem is how normalized the practice of eating out has become. What was once a rare family or personal indulgence is now a regular occurrence, with more than 50% of our food dollars being spent on foods we buy outside of the home, and lord knows what percentage of the remainder being spent on reheating boxes, stirring packages together and ultimately just pretending to actually cook.

As part of our intake questionnaire in my weight management practice we ask how many prepared meals a person purchases on a weekly basis. While I haven't crunched the numbers, I'd be surprised if the average were lower than 5.

I guess what I'm getting it is that all the Heart Attack Grill is doing is meeting a demand, and that it's the demand that's broken, not the suppliers.

What I want to know is what has happened to society to lead to that increase in demand? Why don't we value home cooked meals any more? Why do we as a society utilize restaurants like our parents utilized grocery stores?

While it's impossible to finger point at specific answers to those questions up above, that doesn't mean we can't do something about them. In fact I'd argue that there's no shortage of things we can do, just that there seems to be little, if any, political or personal will to do them. Environmental problems require environmental changes. We need to change what we consider to be "normal" such that meals out again become rare treats, and that sitting around family dinner tables again becomes the norm.

So how do we do that?

Some off the top thoughts - re-prioritizing after-school activities to include at least one family shared cooked meal, turning off our electronic smart phone tethers when we leave the office, actually scheduling cooking and shopping times into our agendas, bringing home economics back to our schools, running public health campaigns vilifying purchased meals as a whole (and/or promoting actual cooking), changing crop subsidies such that places like the Grill can't serve ridiculously cheap calories, changing zoning laws to curtail the practice of fast food setting up within walking distances of schools, eliminating school and public institution based no-name fast food, instead of cities giving out free trees giving out free seeds and compost for backyard vegetable gardens, tax subsidies on fresh fruits and vegetables.......

That the Heart Attack Grill (and other restaurants) exist isn't the problem, it's the demand for their products and services that we need to change.

Domino's thinks 2oz of pizza is a serving!?

Many thanks to eagle eyed blog reader and tweeter Kristen Schlag who spotted some discrepancies over at Dominos regarding their new line of "artisan" pizzas.

What'd she notice?

Well according to their hover over and menu based descriptions, these pizzas "Serve 2".

Personally, when looking at the photo of the pizzas as a whole I'd argue that a 2 person serving, in the real world, ain't gonna happen, and that most certainly these $7.99 pizzas are designed and expected to serve just one.

But here's the neat trick part.

Looking at the nutritional information page for the pizzas you'll learn that according to Dominos per artisan pizza there are eight servings - with the Artisan Spinach and Feta pizza, each of those servings is listed as just 62g (2oz).



If Dominos were even remotely interested in doing right by their customers, these pizzas' nutritional information would be listed per pizza.

So I'll help them out.

Artisan Italian Sausage and Pepper Trio: 1,280 calories, 2,640mg sodium

Artisan Spinach and Feta: 1,200 calories, 2,000mg sodium

Artisan Tuscan Salami and Roasted Veggies: 1,200 calories, 2,240mg sodium

Good lord! British Columbia government actively encouraging eating out!

Oy and vey.

It's running under the banner of "Healthy Families BC", a British Columbia based public health initiative to improve provincial health, and it's called, "Informed Dining".

Here's its headline,

"Eating out has become an enjoyable part of our everyday lives. You can choose to dine in style over a leisurely meal at a host of restaurants or order a take-away meal to eat in the comfort of your own home. You may pick up a quick bite at your local coffee shop or hospital cafeteria when visiting loved ones in a health-care facility."

Yes, hurray for eating out! It's wonderful. No one needs to cook any more. Throw out your pots and pans! Lose your bowls!

Wait. What? There's a downside?

Oh, the quality of the foods you, "enjoyably eat out as part of your everyday lives" might not be as high? And what? No. I don't believe it. There are known to be enormous piles of calories in virtually all restaurant foods?

Hmmmm, what to do, what to do.

Encourage home cooking? Set up programs with school kitchens to teach healthy meal preparation? Work on improved access to farmers' markets? Consider changing the way fresh produce is subsidized and taxed? Suggest that perhaps we should try to eat out less?

Nope, not according to the public health folks working for the province of British Columbia.

They think that instead we should look for that logo up above when we "enjoyably eat out as part of our everyday lives."

So what will that logo mean to us? Healthy, low calorie meals?

Nope.

What it means is that if we ask for nutritional information, we'll be given a separate pamphlet that'll enable us to look at how nutritionally awful everything on the menu is before we order it.

Hurray!?

What else will you get?

These not even remotely wordy, confusing or busy anchoring statement charts:

So will people use the information?

Well I'm certain the restaurant industry will use the information. They'll use it to fight any and every proposed mandatory menu board labeling legislation by using the Informed Dining program to prove they're already proactively part of the solution and are doing their part.

And consumers?

Well one study which I blogged about once upon a time found that of 4,311 folks who frequented restaurants with available calorie information that wasn't actually posted on the menus themselves, a grand total of 6 people utilized it.

You know I'm not sure there's a more straightforward and important healthy eating message than reduce your meals out, and here's British Columbia not only dropping the ball on that message, but also explicitly giving eating out their official blessing, while simultaneously empowering the food industry with politically positive PR.

You know it's entirely true that, "Eating out has become an enjoyable part of our everyday lives" and I'd venture that until that changes, healthier is not what we're going to grow.

Oy and vey indeed.

Restaurant calories - a cautionary tale

Restaurant calories are stupid high.

Doesn't matter if what you're ordering sounds like it's made with healthy ingredients, the likelihood is that a single meal will have at least a half a day's worth of calories, and sometimes, a couple of days worth.

That's not the cautionary tale. This is.

A reader sent me an email the other day. His wife had eaten out at a big chain fast casual restaurant and had ordered a pasta dish. She'd eaten half of it, and brought the other half home, and gave it to my reader to bring for lunch the next day.

My reader happens to be someone who weighs and measures their food, and given this chain posted their calorie counts online, he figured he'd weigh it and calculate the calories involved.

Imagine his surprise when his wife's half eaten portion of pasta still weighed as much as the full portion listed on the chain's website. The actual plated restaurant portion therefore, had double the already large number of calories the chain claimed.

Coincidentally, later that same week, I saw another patient who happened to work in a kitchen at that very same chain. They told me that when the plated food doesn't look quite right, or if it's taken too long to prepare, they simply plate more food so that the customer, who might have been upset with the wait or the aesthetics, is instead thrilled with their portion size.

For me those two stories gave me my first pause regarding mandated calorie labeling. Not enough pause to change my view that it'll be exceedingly helpful to those who want to pay attention, but enough pause to worry that some folks may be lulled into a false sense of security, and that coincident with any legislative calorie labeling effort, should be a massive public health campaign to encourage from scratch, home cooking.

[Below is a quick clip from CBS on menu labeled calories - email subscribers, you need to head to the blog to watch]

Please step away from the Doggy-Bag.

Restaurant food's calories are non-intuitive, invisible, and insane!

I remember watching a recent TV show that had calorie counts from restaurant meals. This particular restaurant was a fancy-shmancy one. The kind with the big plates and the small, little portions in the middle.

Anyhow, this one lady decided to order a beet salad as an appetizer, followed by fish, served on vegetables, served on couscous.

Total calories for her meal? Over 2,100.

Crazy!

So let's say she was doing the pretty common dieting practice of only eating half her meal. She'd still be downing an astounding 1,050 for the meal (not including beverage or dessert).

And if she got a doggy-bag?

She'd be doing it again for lunch.

I get it. I'm thrifty too, and if I paid for it, I feel I ought to bring it home. But really, is it worth the calories?

My advice?

If it's an awesome meal - by all means, have it again for lunch, calories be damned.

But if it's not. If it's just a meal. Why not just leave those calories behind at the restaurant?

[And remember, for extra tidbits, or if you'd prefer to follow this blog there, you can also follow Weighty Matters on Facebook]

Burger King - Stricter Nutritional Criteria than Health Check!

Last week Burger King Canada announced new nutritional criteria for their advertised kids' meals. I'll come back to that word, "advertised" in a bit, but wanted to look at what Burger King thinks their healthier kids' meals should contain:

1. No more than 560 calories
2. No more than 600mg of sodium
3. Less than 30 percent of the calories from fat
4. Less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fat
5. No added trans fat
6. No more than 10 percent of calories from added sugars

Doesn't sound particularly healthy to me. 560 calories is still more than a child should consume in a single meal. 600mg of sodium is half a day's worth. The calories from fat and saturated fat stuff I don't care too much about. No trans fats - seems like a no brainer. I was pleased however to see the no more than 10% of calories from added sugars as that's the World Health Organization's recommendation.

So basically it's a bit of healthier window dressing but certainly nothing brag worthy.

Nothing brag worthy unless of course you're comparing Burger King's new guidelines with those of the Heart and Stroke Foundation's awful misinformation program Health Check.

What does Health Check have to say about restaurant kids' meals?

1. No caloric limits
2. Allows up to 720mg of sodium
3. Similar limit on total fat
4. Similar limit on saturated fat
5. Allows 5% of fat to be artery clogging trans-fat (and here I thought zero trans fat was a "no-brainer")
6. No limit on added sugar

Man, if I was the marketing director of Burger King's brand I'd be all over this as for those keeping score, compared with Burger King's, Health Check's kids' meals allow for unlimited calories, ignore added sugar, allow for a whopping amount of trans-fat and allow for 20% more sodium.

So should we be cheering for Burger King? I'm not. Ultimately this is just smoke and mirrors as their new dramatically stricter than Health Check but still weak nutritional criteria only apply to their "advertised" kids meals and likely is just another ploy to appease parents and try to steer governments away from considering regulations.

Interesting too that a day after the announcement the media was all over it and rightly pointed out the hollowness of Burger King's pledge. What a shame the media doesn't hold Health Check and the Heart and Stroke Foundation up to the same degree of scrutiny.

Carl's Jr.'s bid to out-gross KFC's Double Down

First found by the folks over at Food Beast (that's their picture too - thanks Food Beast!) may I introduce to you the Foot Long Cheeseburger.

While there are no numbers on it yet, if we take a look at Carl's Jr.'s bacon cheeseburger's calories and multiply by 3 it may well run you in the neighbourhood of 2,460 calories and 5,070mg of sodium.

For those who like comparisons that'd be eating the caloric and sodium equivalent of roughly 5 KFC Double Downs.

Cost per calorie? Well we can't use the $4 cost because that doesn't include bacon but $7 apparently does so that'd be 3.5 calories per penny.

Head over to Food Beast to read their review and check out their pics.

Heart and Stroke Jump Rope for Pizza

Ever hear of the Heart and Stroke Jump Rope for Heart program? Basically school children across Canada skip rope to fundraise for the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

According to the Heart and Stroke Jump Rope for Heart parents' page the program is important because,

"The biggest threat today is childhood obesity, with 26% of Canada's children (2 - 17 year olds) being overweight or obese - over 1.6 million!

JUMP FOR A HEALTHIER TOMORROW

At the Heart and Stroke Foundation, we're working hard to stop this trend through programs like Jump Rope for Heart."

One of my reader's elementary school kids participated in this year's Jump Rope for Heart and you wanna guess what they and all their friends received for jumping rope for a few minutes? They each received a coupon for a free kid's meal at Boston Pizza, a Heart and Stroke Foundation mega-sponsor.

I've blogged about the unholy partnership between Boston Pizza and the Heart and Stroke Foundation before with regards to their Valentine's Day heart shaped pizzas and the Health Check restaurant program, but this really takes it to a new level of abominable.

Why?

Before I get into some numbers, bare in mind that the recommended maximal number of calories per kid's meal is 400 and that a child's recommended daily total sodium intake is 1200mg, and that childhood obesity is the primary driver behind the Heart and Stroke Jump for Heart program.

Now, doing the math on the Heart and Stroke Jump for Heart coupon kid's'meals, the average meal (and full disclosure here, I admittedly didn't include the "Baked Salmon" main or the "Steamed Vegetables" side because what kid in their right mind would order them when eating out at Boston Pizza) contains 742 calories and 1,197mg of sodium - 2 meals worth of calories and a full day's worth of sodium.

But that's just the average. If your kid eats the Boston Pizza grilled chicken sandwich with mayo, a side of fries, a juice and a "Monster Cookie", they'll consume a Heart and Stroke Foundation sponsored 1,293 calories and 2,220mg of sodium along with 10 teaspoons of sugar for good measure.

So there's a few great lessons for these impressionable kids - unhealthy food is a fabulous reward for good deeds and that a few minutes of light exercise earns a highly processed, high calorie, high sodium and high sugar meal.

Oh but parents, don't worry. According to the Jump Rope for Heart website,

"When your child participates, they learn the importance of physical activity, healthy eating and social responsibility."

Because what's healthier than your child eating a full day's worth of calories and two days worth of sodium in one meal at Boston Pizza, and what's more socially responsible than a for-health, non-profit organization like the Heart and Stroke Foundation encouraging families to eat out at restaurants to help combat the scourge of childhood obesity?

Fire. Them. All.

Built environments impact on obesity through food, not fitness.

Chalk up another causal win to food in the battle of what's responsible for our current obesity epidemic - this time in the arena of built environment.

Built environment is the term given to the neighbourhood you live in. It has to do with things like walkability, parks, bike paths, sidewalks and all the various and sundry that city planners can do to try to shape your use of where you live.

Built environment is also a hot button issue at obesity conferences with researchers trying to find ways to get people moving more through smarter urban planning.

My belief is that casually moving more doesn't matter too much with regards to obesity. There's simply no amount of sidewalks or bike paths or beautiful parks that you could put in a neighbourhood to help with the issue of obesity because obesity is primarily about energy intake, not energy output, and really no amount of leisurely strolling is going to negate our horrendously calorific food environment.

But built environment does matter. What matters about the built environment though is food and how close you are to it, and what type it is.

In a study published this month in the Journal of Planning Education and Research Samina Raja et al looked at the influence of built and food environments on 172 women's BMIs in Erie County New York between 1999-2004.

What did they find?

1. The more restaurants within walking distance the higher the BMI (p=0.037).

2. The closer you live to a healthful food destination (supermarket), the lower the BMI (p=0.025).

3. Walkability didn't make one whit of difference.

Interestingly the authors listed the fact that they didn't know the types of restaurants as a limitation and suggested that there might be healthier ones. I'd argue, with exceedingly rare exceptions, restaurant food, regardless of whether it's sit down, stand up, casual, or fancy, has non-intuitively, astronomically large numbers of calories.

Ultimately what matters isn't the sidewalks, it's where they take you.

Raja, S., Li Yin, ., Roemmich, J., Changxing Ma, ., Epstein, L., Yadav, P., & Ticoalu, A. (2010). Food Environment, Built Environment, and Women's BMI: Evidence from Erie County, New York Journal of Planning Education and Research, 29 (4), 444-460 DOI: 10.1177/0739456X10367804

Are Canadian restaurants allowed to make health claims?

Somehow I doubt it, but I'm not sure.

Regardless of whether it's legal or not, check out Thai Express' new promotion,

"Feed your Brain

Beef Stir Fry with Eggplant and Vegetables on Rice with a 16oz beverage

Nasunin found in the eggplant skin is a potent antioxidant and free radical scavenger that has been shown to protect cellmemBRANES from damage"

Yup, what could be better for you than fried red meat over white rice with a sugared soda chaser?

I wish there were something we could put in the drinking water that would protect the general public from consuming junk food in response to ridiculous over-simplifications and extrapolations of basic science research.

[Hat tip to loyal blog reader Émilie]

Pretty much nobody checks fast food calories.

One of the arguments that Big Food puts forward against mandatory calorie labeling is that many restaurants already have in-store brochures or online listings of calories.

Ever wonder how many people look at them?

Well wonder no more as a study published in the American Journal of Public Health set out to answer that very question.

The study was pretty straight forward. Researchers observed 4,311 people buying food at McDonald's, Burger King, Au Bon Pain and Starbucks to see how many of them looked at those respective restaurants' in-store (but not on menu) nutritional information. In order to be counted all you would have had to do is, walked up to a nutritional information poster and turned their head toward it, picked up a pamphlet, or touched the screen of the computer in Au Bon Pain that displays nutritional information.

So out of 4,311 people want to guess how many checked?

6.

6 out of 4,311 people - 0.1%.

Guess the argument that so long as it's in-store it doesn't need to be on-menu's out the window.

Shocker! Restaurant Food has More Calories!

Sure, common sense already told you so, but now here's proof.

In last weeks issue of Review of Agricultural Economics James Binkley looked at, "Calorie and Gram Differences between Meals at Fast Food and Table Service Restaurants".

His non-shocking conclusions?

Calories and portions in restaurant meals are larger than at home ones and restaurants are as bad if not worse calorically than fast food.

Breakfasts at table service restaurants typically had 261 more calories than home cooked and fast food 206 more.

Lunches at table services restaurants typically had 183 more calories than home cooked and fast food 227 more.

Dinners at table service restaurants typically had 219 more calories than home cooked and fast food 120 more.

Couple those conclusions with the facts that food dollars spent outside the home have increased from 33% in the early 70s to 54% today and that obesity rates have risen dramatically since the early 70s (doubling in adults and trebling in children) and you've got one clear cut puzzle piece.

My simple eating out rules?

Keep celebratory meals out. Keep some social meals out (but look for other socializing options). Keep necessary business meals out. Lose all the convenience ones, the because it's easier than cooking ones.

Quite simply eat out the smallest amount you need to be happy.

[Via Parke Wilde's US Food Policy blog - because what other blogger are you aware of that reads Review of Agricultural Economics?]

Shocker - Kids' Meals in Restaurants have too many Calories!

Apropos to my post from yesterday is a story that broke embargo at noon and honest to goodness, I had no idea it was going to hit.

It was from one of my favourite groups, the Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the non-profit nutritional advocacy group who also publish the informative and surprisingly affordable monthly newsletter Nutrition Action (ad free and only $24 per year).

What did they do this time?

They calculated the Calories in 1,474 different kid meals available at big chain fast food and semi-fast food restaurants.

The results?

93% of them had more than a third of the Calories an average child would need in a daytime and 86% were too high in sodium.

So going back to yesterday...if activity rates haven't changed in the past 30 years and obesity rates have tripled.....and if restaurant meals for kids have too many calories as do restaurant meals for adults....and if eating out Calories now account for a full 1/3 of daily kid Calories ya think there be a connection?

Darn tootin'!

Oh, and about the recommendation that when you eat out you should just substitute for healthier fare - two comments. Firstly, healthier does not mean lower in Calories and many foods thought of as healthy may in fact be surprisingly unhealthy. Case in point, substitute chocolate milk for soda and you might well be providing your children with more Calories, saturated fat and sugar than the small soda had in the first place. Secondly, how many of you think your kids will let you get away with ordering Burger King's new apple fries in place of real ones? In addition to? Maybe. In place of? Forget about it.

Easy bottom line here. Worried about your kid's weight? Don't (or only very rarely) take them out to eat.

[BTW, if you live in Ottawa, check out CJOH at 6:25pm where I may well be chatting about this and potentially other nutrition news]

Restaurants Lie!

Shocker.

Ok, maybe not so shocking.

What am I talking about?

So what's the story?

ABC News in seven cities across the US set out to see if the items they purchased from the low-fat or low-calorie options in Chili's, The Cheesecake Factory, Taco Bell, On the Border, Applebee's and Macaroni Grill actually had the amount of fat and calories the restaurants' nutritional information pages said they did by sending them to an independent lab for analysis.

The results?

Some foods had twice the calories and fat that the restaurants claimed they did, and in a few rare cases some had less.

The lesson here?

When you eat out, even if you order "healthy" choices, even if the restaurant lists the calories, there's still a great chance you're getting more than you paid for.

The other lesson is for public health authorities and that is if in fact you legislate that calories be listed on menus, you'd better put in a mechanism for not only enforcement of the listing, but also validity.

A New Form of Child Abuse?

This past December my family spent some time away from Ottawa's frigid temperatures on Florida's Sanibel Island.

On the island is the original Cheeburger, Cheeburger a burger joint likely named after the goings on in the classic Saturday Night Live John Belushi skit, Olympia Cafe. Cheeburger, Cheeburger now has over 80 locations across America and their motto is, "Big is Better".

Walk inside and immediately you'll see their Wall of Fame where folks who eat their 1lb burger are immortalized by Polaroid and pinned in pride to a wall of cork.

They also have another wall of fame - the Kids Wall of Fame where kids under 12 who eat a 1/2lb burger have their own wall of "pride".

Looking at the pictures of the kids, many look to me to be in the neighbourhood of 6-10 years old and sadly I'm sure the vast majority of their parents likely provided a great deal of encouragement and reinforcement in teaching their child that eating far more in a sitting than they'd ever need to is an accomplishment worthy of parental pride.

I know, I know, I'm a stick in the mud and it's all in good fun, yet over the past 30 years, American childhood obesity has quadrupled for children ages 6–11 (from 4 to 19 percent) and while I don't think it's all because of Cheeburger, Cheeburger (who by the way make absolutely fantastic burgers), I do think a great deal does have to do with parents who encourage unhealthy eating and sedentary behaviours through poor role modeling, and in cases like this, through what I would describe as overt gastronomic child abuse.

Me? I'd love to see another wall up in Cheeburger, Cheeburger. I'd call it the Parents Wall of Shame and I'd take the picture of any parent who encouraged and allowed their child to gorge unnecessarily, all the while cheering them on, and then I'd post that picture for all the world to see what woe-derful parents they are.


[Hat tip to my father for taking the pictures after we'd left the island, to Ronnie for lending him his camera and to my wife for noticing the walls while she picked up our takeout]

Maybe you shouldn't have a lemon with your drink

This has been floating around the net for a while, however I only first saw it yesterday.

Apparently lemons in restaurants are covered in bacteria.

Now that's not in and of itself a surprise as pretty much everything is covered in bacteria, but the fecal bacteria, those I'd rather avoid.

Watch the video and decide for yourself.

Me? I think I may forgo the lemons.

[Hat tip to my friend and colleague Hillel]

Calorie Awareness has been Terminated

Boy, I sure wouldn't want to face Big Food in a fight.

So far they've trounced the Province of Ontario (Bill C-283 to put Calories on menus voted down in the house), the State of New York (a judge ruled a State law requiring Calorie information on menus broke Federal laws) and now they reveal that they control the Terminator as yesterday Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed bill SB120 - a bill that would have required posting of Calories on menus in chain restaurants across the State of California.

The quote from Dr. Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy sums it up pretty well,

"By vetoing Senate Bill 120, the governor not only denies Californians of the basic information they need to make healthy decisions when dining out but he completely contradicts his commitment to the health of Californians"

Think it's not important, think having Calories on menus is an overblown issue? Please let me know who you are so I can sell you some stuff without telling you the price - my daughters' college funds need some topping up.

And now I must placate our new ruling overlords.

Big Food, I'm sorry I give you such a hard time on this blog. I love Calories. Everyone should eat tons of them and no one deserves to know how many they're having. Restaurants are part of the solution, not the problem. Your voluntary online programs are more than sufficient and anyone too lazy to remember to visit your websites before they go out, anyone too disorganized to decide where they're eating at the start of every day, doesn't deserve your incredible online caloric help. Oh, and of course it makes complete and total sense that putting the exact same information that's found on your voluntary online websites into your menus and on your menuboards would be impossible because of supply chain variability - the fact that the calories and information on your website doesn't change does not for one moment take any steam out of that argument.

Please don't terminate me....I have two beautiful little girls....I love you!

Kiss menu calories goodbye (for now)

Consumers want Calories listed on menus - that's why politicians have been pushing bills through their respective government bodies to have menu board calories become a legislated affair. In the United States there are now 16 States with similar legislation in their dockets.

A few months ago New York city became the first city to enact such a law and Big Food promptly took the city to court.

Unfortunately yesterday Big Food won the first round.

A New York city judge struck down the law stating that it broke a federal law that exempted restaurants from posting calories on menus if they were posted elsewhere (like the internet), though some writers have pointed out that the judge's decision left room for a reworking of the bill to restrict action to restaurants with 10 or more locations.

The Wall Street Journal had a quote from a McDonald's spokesman named William Whitman who of course was thrilled with the court's decision because,

"posting information like this on a menu board really runs the risk of confusing customers"

So just how stupid does McDonald's think you are that posting calories on menus will be confusing? Do you get confused each week when supermarket fliers report new sale prices? Does the half off rack at the clothing store give you seizures? Do you eat glue? Ummm, that 410 number beside the quarter pounder....does that mean it's $410? That sure seems like a lot for a burger.

Good news is, eventually calories will be posted on menus and menu boards. The will of the people, even the incredibly stupid people that McDonald's apparently thinks we all are, will eventually prevail. Reason being that as far as weight goes, eating without knowing calories is about as smart as shopping without knowing prices, and our eating without knowing calories is costing our governments dearly as they bleed weight related health care dollars.