Can you label one and not the other?
Mar 14, 2008 general food, health, restaurants
Yes it’s restaurants like McDonald’s and their super-smiley I’m Loving It campaigns that lure in the masses and fatten them up, but is making them slap up calorie counts and nutritional information just because they’re large, easy to hit targets, fair?
Certainly I’m no fan of large scale chain restaurants but these types of menu labeling laws really annoy me. It’s an unfair tipping of the scales and especially so considering that any one of the multi-course meals you or I might eat at our favorite restaurants gives a #2 Extra Value Meal the nutritional win on virtually every level.
After chain restaurants have spent millions on new menus courtesy of an influx of legislation nationwide as these laws filter inland from San Francisco, Seattle, and New York, it will be interesting to see the wide-gaping jaws of starry-eyed dietitians like, Elizabeth Bailey, when they see that obesity more than likely continued to rise anyway.
Sure “behavior change takes awhile,” as she said in the article, but it’s not good enough to put up calorie counts, fat contents, and sodium information on menus under the misguided assumption that it is the panacea to the obesity epidemic.
She can offer up stellar sound-bytes like:
“If you get that information about a hamburger, it might not change your choice then. But the next time you’ll remember, three months later you might not get the hamburger,”
…and she can even choose to believe them, but we’ve all seen the guy that thinks a salad is healthy just because it’s a salad before dousing it with 4 tablespoons of a creamy buttermilk blue.
The truth is that the majority of Americans have absolutely no idea what those numbers mean in the first place or how they fit into a balanced diet. Until proper education and a ballpark figure for what a person should be consuming are given to Americans the menu information is basically useless, and even if someday those obstacles have been cleared, no matter how much people might hate restaurants like McDonald’s and all that they represent, it’s still not fair to single out one menu over another strictly based on the cash flow of a multi-unit operation.
I don’t even see how it’s legal.
| McDonald’s Cheeseburger | 3oz Foie Gras | |
| Total Fat (g) | 12 | 37.2 |
| Saturated Fat (g) | 6 | 12.3 |
| Trans Fat (g) | 0.5 | 0 |
| Cholesterol (mg) | 40 | 126 |
| Sodium (g) | 750 | 591 |
| Carbohydrates (g) | 33 | 3.9 |
| Dietary Fiber (g) | 2 | 0 |
| Protein (g) | 15 | 9.6 |
Tags: cheeseburger, foie gras, McDonald's, New York, nutritional information, obesity epidemic, San Francisco, Seattle
March 14th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Oh, man, I don’t even want to know how much saturated fat was in that foie gras burger I had at Burger Bar…
March 14th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I would still be more apt to eat the foie given that I am 100% positive the foie is from a purveyor of the highest standards, natural and devoid of any strange mystery ingredients. 3oz of foie is a lot in my book and about the maximum I can consume in one meal due to the richness. It’s the wonderful accompaniments that enhance/compliment the richness and make it so wonderful to eat. The McD crapburger cannot toot the same horn. The bun is loaded with enriched, sugary flour, god knows what type of cow gave up that meat, the cheese is processed from the get go…iceburg is pretty devoid of any nutritional value and who knows about those sad little pickles and tomatoes.
there…i’m done.
March 14th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
one more thing…everyone is responsible for knowing what they put into their mouths. not big brother.
March 14th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
It’s just one dish of many we would eat though and the added components of a foie dish will jack the fat, carbs, etc ever higher.
3oz is a pretty standard portion outside of St. Louis where a lot of places give you slices that aren’t worth your time.
Plus, it’s not the only thing you’ll be eating, and my bigger point is that I was just using it as an example of the hypocrisy that is forcing 15+ unit establishments to label menus and other’s not to.
The thing I’ve been wondering further to day is what happens to Jean Georges, because that dude has a global empire and I’m pretty sure has far more than 15 units.
Or what about a Lettuce Entertain You style restaurant group that doesn’t have duplicates of one brand name but it s corporation with more than 15 units overall.
Questions, questions.
March 14th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I guess you could also argue that McDonald’s does a significantly higher amount of biz compared to Jean George and the like. Or, I assume they do. Maybe it’s a quantity thing.
March 19th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
These laws are crazy. If McD’s has to label its food then so should Eleven Madison Park.
Good article in today’s NY Times about the consequences to those in the food industry of all the high fat stuff they eat and what certain people are doing to make sure they stay healthy. Even Mario Batali sounds like he might try to drop some weight this year after being inspired by his boor of a partner, Joe Bastianich.
This brings me to another point, not about labeling, about about low fat options at mid to fine dining restaurants. Let’s say a person needs to watch his cholesterol/fat intake. How many local menus have enough items that address this person’s needs. I’ve been on the lookout at local places lately and there are not really a sufficient amount of options. But if one goes to Applebee’s — what do you know — they have a whole menu of items for fat-conscious diners.
I know that when people go out to a good restaurant they are likely to not bother themselves about the amount of fat in their food because they are out to have a good time and, if they’re like me, figure that they’ll make up for it later. But if restauranteurs want us eating at their places more often, shouldn’t they be offering meals that we could eat four times a week without risking the health of our heart?
March 19th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Harvest is the only place I know of with a healthy subset of the menu with the spa thing, but I’d love to see someone take it a step further and have actual nutritional menu on a secondary menu if asked for.
PF Changs also has this whole marathon menu or something because they sponsor one of the rock ‘n roll marathons.