Energy-content disclosures to be required for restaurants

[angus]

Apparently US consumers consume 33% of their calories, and spend 42% of their food budget, outside the home.  The medical insurance law passed in the last congress has a provision that kicks in next year which will require the posting of calorie information at restaurants in an effort to cause consumers to make different choices.  They're thinking about obesity and its associated health problems.

There are exemptions for movie theaters, bowling alleys, airplanes and other places where less than half the floor space is devoted to food sales.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2011/04/01/AFOxCkHC_story.html?hpid=z2

Just FYI.  Maybe you guys already knew this.  Sorry if it's a duplication.  I don't think I knew this before.

[angus]

I'm pretty sure it's only for chains, which have relatively standardized menus - a small independent restaurant doesn't have to count calories on all its dishes (which may, after all, change from day to day).

yes, the article says that.  I should have put that in the thread title.  Chains, even small kiosks of chains, will be required to do this.  I'm also unsure of the detail they'll require.  For example, if an assay in which 100 measurements were made of a heterogeneous sample (e.g., peanut brittle or marbled rye), do they put mean values and some measure of confidence interval?  Do they need to show cholesterol levels even if it is so small as to get rounded of to zero milligrams when using one digit?  Do they need to list phenylalanine content for the phenylketonurics?  Do they need to list sucrose content for the diabetics?  Or is it just about telling people about the amount and types of fat?  This article wasn't clear about all that.  I guess I could dig a little deeper to find out.  It'll be interesting to learn if it has any effect on consumer choices.

[angus]

And this is controversial how exactly?

Not that I was courting controversy--I put this in the general discussion rather than policy debate board specifically--but everything's controversial.  Especially everything required by law.

There's what John said, especially since it will set a precedent leading to such expenditures even for local places eventually.  Or more likely:  Why the exceptions?  I work in a bowling alley and my kids come here and stay here after school every day till the end of my shift.  Between the second-hand smoke and the fried foods they serve, I don't think my kid's are gonna live long enough to give me grandchildren.

Most of all, why are they having them list only energy content and nothing else?  After all, one assumes that the goal is to promote good health, and thereby cut society's medical expenditures, which currently account for 16% of the aggregate GDP.  So they have all these restaurants print up signs and pay the costs for those signs, and the sign over the Angus triple-meat bacon cheeseburger says the same thing as the sign over the broccoli, chicken and feta cheese casserole:  950 Calories.  It's rather misleading to a public as generally ignorant as those likely to be at all affected by such labeling.  And it sort of defeats the purpose of the bill, since it adds to our aggregate health care costs (signs, and the agency types hired to enforce their placement, don't come free), while possibly not affecting consumer choices in a way that would offset those costs.

But, as I said, I wasn't courting controversy personally.  Just trowing it out there fyi. 

[angus]

Yes, and nutritional requirements vary.  For example, my son is 6.  We like to give him lots of fat.  We generally buy avocados, which are the fattiest fruit you can buy.  (something like 90% of the calories of an avocado come from fat.)  I don't think he looks skinny or wimpy, but he's tall for his age, about 90 percentile on the charts, whereas his weight is 60ish percentile usually, so we just like to make sure he's getting enough energy.  Of course we always make sure he gets lots of calcium as well.  He doesn't like ice cream or cheese.  Can't stand the smell of it actually.  And he won't go anywhere near milk.  Says it's nasty.  So obviously we're always looking for calcium info on packages.  Broccoli has lots of calcium, and luckily he likes broccoli.

I'm height/weight proportional, but I'm 44, and my father died when he was 44 from an acute myocardial infarction, so I"m more into watching cholesterol.  My systolic bp has consistently been in the mid-130s the past few years, so I just sort of watch the salt and cholesterol.  I should also probably limit my grain alcohol consumption, but I don't really think that's likely to happen.

As for my wife, her ass has been getting bigger since we got married, so now she likes to avoid fat.  My wife also has a slightly different set of enzymes than I.  We probably last shared a common ancestor 50 thousand or more years ago.  For example, she doesn't have much alcohol dehydrogenase and turns bright red after half a bottle of beer.  I, on the other hand, can consume half a bottle of Jack Daniels and still do calculus and physics problems.  But she can eat mounds of sodium without problems, whereas I'm quite sure the salt makes me feel flaky and parched.  Additionally, she can consume far more carbohydrates than I.  She needs two big bowls of rice.  I feel full after one big bowl of rice.  On the other hand, I can eat a 16-ounce steak without flatulence and catarrh.  (Not that I should.)  But she can eat maybe 3 or 4 ounces of meat at a sitting.

And there are diabetics and phenylketoneurics and vegetarians and all sorts of others who have special needs, none of which is addressed by this requirement.

But we all need lots of calories.  According to the surgeon general, about 2800 for me, about 2100 for her, and about 1500 for the boy, not that we're actually keeping up with it.  I've never been into counting calories.  If I feel full, I'm full.  But it would be nice to have information about cholesterol, fat, sodium, sugars, carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, as well as calcium and other minerals.

Then again, the people who are concerned about such things are likely to have an idea about them even before entering a restaurant.  And the people not concerned about such things are likely not to notice labels even if the restaurants go to great pains to make such information available.  So the overwhelming feeling I have is that it all amounts to yet another useless expenditure on health care, adding to the incredible amount we already spend.  A stereotypically American attempt to deal with the symptoms of a problem by throwing money at it, while simultaneously ignoring the deeper causes and patting ourselves on the back for being so clever and so progressive.

[angus]

A stereotypically American attempt to deal with the symptoms of a problem by throwing money at it, while simultaneously ignoring the deeper causes and patting ourselves on the back for being so clever and so progressive.

Actually, as a matter of fact, the problem is caused by too little money - by an impoverishment of the majority of americans, angus (as can be seen in the fact that poors are fat and riches much less fat).  The bad food that we are attempting to label is force-fed down the gullets of these poor geese to support a corporate system of control which serves a tiny (and very elegantly fed) elite.  Their behaviors and lifestyles are also dictated to a precise degree by their obligatory service to this elite. 

So, in point of fact, we are not throwing money at the problem - we have created the problem by stealing the money of the fat poor.

rejectamenta!


A mango costs 88 cents.  Fourteen ounces of Tofu costs two dollars.  An eight-ounce yoplait costs fifty cents.  That totals three dollars and 38 cents.

Or, for $3.38 you could eat a big mac and fries.

Choices are made by the consumer.  I'm not seeing any evidence for your conclusion.

Then again, I also don't support the government requirement to point out that a big mac and fries has the same number of calories as a mango, 7/8 of a pound of tofu, and a cup of yogurt.  So I'm not taking sides here.  You could wear like a badge of honor that you're equally capable of intellectual lethargy as the U.S. government, since they're millions of people, while you're only one.

[angus]

Nutrition information - including information about things that are a heck of a lot more relevant than a simple calorie count - already must be made available upon request at chain restaurants.

Yes, this new requirement is simply the energy content.  More specifically, it is the sum of the enthalpies of formation of the compounds in the food, typically determined by averaging the results of calorimetric measurements from a large number of heterogeneous samples.  Anyway, we should continue to call this "energy-content disclosure" or "caloric information" and not "nutritional information," since the latter would be misleading.

Also, it seems that the results are mixed.  The article I linked says that a market research company found that people studying a restaurant’s menu chose foods with 12 percent fewer calories when they were provided the calorie counts for each item, but did so by ordering fewer items, rather than substituting with healthier items.  Also in that same study, when asked how they choose restaurant food they spoke about quality, freshness and portion sizes, among other things.  Calories were not mentioned.  So the jury's still out.  From what I've read in other articles, nutrition experts are pretty skeptical about these disclosures having a lasting impact on most consumers.  So essentially we may be throwing more of our aggregate GDP into "health care" in a way that doesn't promise a healthier society.  Nothing unusual about that.

[angus]

Fair enough.  I should have chosen a can of tuna, a couple of tomatoes, a braeburn apple, and a crusty sourdough batard.  Okay, that adds up to 3.38 as well and sticks to your gut better.

I take your point about prep time.  Fast food is happy food because it's low-commitment food.  If I get off at 9 and want to be in bed by 11, engaging in brief and perfunctory carnal intercourse with my overweight spouse, I'm better off ordering the happy meal and eating it as I drive home.

But that lifestyle is a sad situation that calorie content-labeling won't change.  Don't you agree?

[angus]

I have noticed that my local supermarket uses NuVal scores, and has so for about a year now.  NuVal scores summarize nutritional information by giving foods a score between 1 and 100.  It purports to take into account more than just the nutrition fact panel.  It considers 30 or so nutrition factors like protein, calcium, vitamins, sugar, sodium, cholesterol, etc.  they're little blue and white stickers on everything, right by the price tag, and the score is in a big (~84 point or so) sans-serif font.  Easy enough to read.

for more information you can click here:  http://www.nuval.com/

I can't say that I pay much attention to them, although I have noticed them.  More importantly, my wife, a consistent label-reader, always trying to pump more fat and calcium into the boy, doesn't even notice them.  I've asked her about them and she said "New bell?  What's that?" 

[angus]

I'm pretty sure it's only for chains, which have relatively standardized menus - a small independent restaurant doesn't have to count calories on all its dishes (which may, after all, change from day to day).

Exactly.....last time I was in Philthadelphia I went to a TGI Fridays across the parking lot since the hotel's food choices weren't much and since I had far too much booze in me to drive anywhere.......I looked at the menu and on every dish, all the nutritional information is there.......If you seriously read it, you wouldn't have anything but a plain iced tea with no sugar.....

Honestly, if I choose to go to a TGI Fridays......I don't want a menu to tell me how bad I'm eating.......I know that before I walk in.....

Ha.  About six years ago we were in a TGIFridays in Honolulu and I noticed a "bunless burger" on the menu.  I asked about it and the very rotund polynesian waitress told me that it's for the carbohydrate free diet people.  How bizarre. 

Well, we're on a new kick now.  We were eating Tofu and bacon tonight, and my wife pulls out a bottle of seaweed and sesame seed that she likes to sprinkle on her rice.  And my son jumps up and down, "oh, oh, let me sprinkle my own."  He loves seaweed, and pretty much anything made from sesame, and likes to cover his rice with it.  And my wife says, enjoy it now, since that's the last bottle we're buying.  Apparently we're no longer going to buy anything from Japan, or at least anything that comes from the seas around Japan, which pretty much means nothing from Japan.  Not that we buy lots of Japanese seafood, but we buy enough that it'll matter I think.

I suppose now that complete nutritional labeling should probably include isotopic abundances of the elements in Japanese seaweed.  Who knew?

Just pass me that bottle of Jack and shut up.  Thank you.

[angus]

If your kid and wife start glowing in the dark you'll know she was right  

India apparently has suspended all imports of food from Japan.