Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Now here’s a law that’s going to work

Part of the new health care act will require any restaurant with 20 or more outlets to display calorie counts for its offerings.

If you order a Wendy’s Triple with cheese, large fries and a Frosty are you going to pay any attention to the fact that the little display on the wall or the tiny print on the menu says that they have a couple of thousand or so calories in them?

On the other end of the scale, you are at Capital Grille, a high-end steak chain with your sweetie. You order a bottle of wine, a couple of appetizers, entrees, sides and maybe you split a dessert because you feel guilty about all those calories, prominently displayed on the wall of the hallway on the way to the restrooms.

Remember back when the “nutritional labels” became mandatory on food labels at the grocery store? Did that change your buying habits?

I’d really, for the humor value, love for the law to be amended to require the restaurants to do the nutritional label “serving” notice thing. Just how many “servings” are there in a Wendy’s Triple or a Capital Grille 20 oz. sirloin?

2 comments:

Posol'stvo the Medved said...

I was at Ted's Montana Grill last Friday and noticed that on their menu they displayed calorie values for each menu item. But they didn't give values - they gave ranges. Pretty broad ranges. 900 - 1500 calorie type ranges.

I'm not sure it was very helpful to me, but it amused me for the 8 minutes I was looking at the menu.

The Curmudgeon said...

Depends on how hungry I am. Maybe a whole serving, maybe half.