Thursday, June 18, 2009

Dietitians of Canada hits bottom, digs


Wow, I'm almost speechless, but don't worry, only almost.

Yesterday Don Butler from the Citizen called me about my post regarding Dietitians of Canada's non-support of mandatory calorie labeling.

When he interviewed me he asked me what I thought DC was worried about.

I told him I didn't know but that common arguments include a mistaken belief that posting calories will cause a sudden outbreak of anorexia; that calories are not the only nutritional determinant of food; and that restaurants may have a tough time making calculations (not true for chain restaurants where uniformity of meals is integral in their success and where calorie counts already exist).

I was way out to lunch.

Nope, apparently the Dietitians of Canada are worried that,

"If a person looks at food that way, would they be more likely to make a higher-calorie choice because they think it's going to taste better?"
Oh and also that people aren't going to understand how to use the information,
"If you just post calories on the menu, how well can consumers use that information? That's a question we have."
So basically it seems that Dietitians of Canada are concerned that Canadians are nutritional morons and that they're going to believe menu posted calories are in fact some sort of new fangled taste-score and consequently choose foods with higher numbers because they think that food is likely to be "more tastier".

As I mentioned yesterday, if I were a Canadian Dietitian, I'd be absolutely mortified.