Maybe, but does the manufacturer have a duty to calculate the calories for you?

In regards to our built in calorie counter I think it's a little outdated. Thanks to evolution our physiology is still geared toward a rugged outdoors lifestyle that we've only recently graduated from in the last few thousand years, which our bodies haven't adapted to yet. For millenia we've been accustomed to food scarcity, driving us to consume as much food as we can when we have the opportunity because you never know where the next meal would come from. Because of the unforgiving lifestyle our ancestors lived, we are hardwired to see eating food as a good thing, a "pick-me-up". This is also why a lot of people turn to food and eating when they get down, because it's a reward mechanism that's triggered chemically. Now when we were living in caves and chasing down mammoths this reward mechanism served us very well as a motivator. Nowadays it's a different story with the largely sedentary lifestyle most of the population lives.

 As to the hunger feelings that tell us when we need to eat, it's been proven that if you eat till you actually feel "full" chances are good you've over-eaten, as there is a delay in how much you've eaten vs when the brain recognizes it. That, and our diet of food pumped full of artificially high levels of sugar and fat mean that you can eat far less than ever feeling "full" and still be over-eating.... a stomach full of leaves and roughage has a lot less energy than a stomach full of beer and pizza... a lesson I tend to learn every weekend...

The government doesn't need to regulate this sort of thing.  If you want to go out and you want to know the nutritional information, look it up on-line.  If the restaurant doesn't have the nutritional information posted and will not give it to you if you write to them, just don't go to the restaurant. 

Also, counting the calories isn't enough to eat healthy, although it is a good start.  As someone said, a 'healthy' option can have the same number of calories as a burger and fries, but at that point you should also be comparing how much fat and what kinds of fats, how many carbs, and how much of the carbs is fiber, etc.  Even if you have two healthy options that are actually healthy, you also have to consider the ingredients: is the salad made from iceberg lettuce (which has pretty much no nutritional value) or is it made from mixed greens? 

 

Yes. The Bureau of Statistics, courtesy of your tax dollars. Plus the Actuarial tables found in the census, plus HHS Public Studies on longevity and risk factors. Do you want me to google that for you as well?



I will only lead the horse to water, you have to drink it.



I totally agree MM. But it is not the government's business, it is OUR business to know

Look, again one of my beefs with this is the fact that the Gov't is involved. One good reason for such a law to be bad? It starts with a simple law like "I want to know the calories in my food". This kinda of law is basically an open door to future ridiculous laws such as "I want 5 versions of this item to meet the needs of different diets" or "I want all restaurants to have 2 menus, 1 regular and one in low calories". or "I wanna be able to sue a restaurant for not having anything on the menu I like that I can eat because of my diet". Considering how predictable the average customer can be, I would not be surprised to see such things happen in the near future. And this is the problem I have with creating new laws without considering future repercussion.

Using the same logic, cars should not have seatbelts in them today. The reason why all vehicles (not counting certain pleasure craft etc) is because legislation forced manufacturers to include seatbelts in their vehicles. GM and Ford didn't just one day wake up and say, "hey, we're gonna put seatbelts in ALL our vehicles because we just care about folks so gosh darn much!!"

With that said, I agree that there is the potential for abuse. This potential will always exist regardless of the type of system we operate under; it's part of human nature. As I said earlier, this isn't out of the bounds of reason in my mind- it's not like we're asking for detailed sodium, potassium, cholesterol levels. Just calories. The most basic ballpark figure you can use to make a decision!

Uh, there is a slight difference that you missed. With a car, there is the human error factor. The seatbelts were meant to save people from either their own mistakes or the mistakes of others while driving a 2 ton vehicle (well, 2 ton may be an exaggeration but you get my point). A person behind the wheel of a vehicle is like a person with a gun, both can be dangerous if not properly protected. Calories are not like cars. Besides, the seatbelt kinda proves my point. Look at what happened after the seatbelt was mandatory, then using it was forced onto people when some believed they did not need to use it. The next probable step will be to sue the car makers for people who still died while wearing a seatbelt even if worn properly and was not defective. See my point now?

They should be an option like radios. Freedom is not a sometime thing. YOu either have it or not. We are loosing it one nanny law at a time. (BTW - when was the last time you saw a car that did not have a radio?)

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Yet another pointless regulatory requirement that only one out of 50 people are going to pay any freakin attention to, while the cost of their meal goes up a quarter and our taxes go up to pay the freakin enforcement nazis.

Please, the government tit is not the solution to our problems, folks. What a lame-ass excuse for an idea this was, asking our masters to "save us from ourselves" yet again. On a positive note, I know I'll lose weight, 'cause I'm gonna go puke right now.

How is this the government saving us from ourselves? All this is, is making it mandatory that restaurants inform you as to what it is you're putting in your body. The restaurant is not controlled in what they can or cannot serve, the consumer is not restrained in any way either. No freedoms are being taken away or curtailed.

What this does come down to is more the fact that the industry, by and large, doesn't want you to know what you're buying because of how bad it really is for you. Most folks want to be healthy, and many go through bouts of exercise and dieting and then quit when they fail to lose weight or even gain weight in the process. The reasons for this are many and mostly outside the scope of this discussion, but I believe much of it comes down to awareness. Most folks simply don't know that more than a quarter of their entire daily requirement is being consumed in one single muffin they get from starbucks in the morning.

Most folks are entirely unaware that by the time lunch at Chilli's is over, they've actually surpassed their caloric requirements for the entire day and that dinner (steak and potatoes?) will just be compounding it.

No one is saying that people should or shouldn't choose to eat a certain food, but by providing this information, people can make an informed decision as opposed to a guess!

Imagine if you decided to go buy a car and you wanted to know how many mpg it got on the highway, and the dealer told you to go look it up online. You'd probably be pretty angry and go find another dealership!

Smart People already know. It is just another nanny law to protect the stupid from Darwin's law.



No, I would have already done that. If you are going to believe a used car salesman, you are going to buy a bridge in Brooklyn too.

Uuuuh, because the Gov't made the law that forces the restaurant to provide information to people who would otherwise not bother to look it up themselves? BTW, does anyone wonder where the money is gonna come from to pay to make either new menus with the calories on them or a separate list that will be provided with the menu? cause if you think the restaurants are just gonna swallow this cost, you got something else coming.



I chose the car I have because it had good MPG and guess what I had already done my homework before I bought the car. But then I guess if we can force others to provide all the details for you why not just make a law to force restaurants to give us specific details as to the amount of each ingredient used as well. That way we can also make sure we do not consume to much of a particular ingredient while we are at it.