Posted on 06/26/2007 12:17:48 PM PDT by libertarianPA
NEW YORK - Don't expect to see the calorie count for Burger King's Double Whopper with cheese on the menu anytime soon.
Burger King, McDonald's and Wendy's are among the chains planning to defy New York City's new rule that they begin posting calories on menus Sunday.
Other big fast food eateries like Taco Bell and KFC aren't saying whether they will comply, but with just days to go until the deadline, the menu boards in their Big Apple restaurants remain unchanged.
All are hoping a New York Restaurant Association lawsuit in federal court will get the new regulation thrown out. Meanwhile, the city won't fine anyone for violating it until October.
"We are not trying to avoid providing this information to customers," said Wendy's spokesman Denny Lynch. He noted that the company has made nutritional information available for 30 years on fliers and posters.
However, New York is the first city in the country to require certain fast food restaurants to list calorie counts next to menu items in type that is at least as large as the price.
Lynch says adding all those numbers will make menus impossible to read.
"You'll either have to have a Times Square-sized menu board, or it could look like a bad day at the eye doctor's office," said Jack Whipple, president of the National Council of Chain Restaurants."
Fast food chains also say they have been unfairly singled because the new rule only applies to restaurants that serve standardized portions and offer nutritional information voluntarily.
Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a health advocacy group, had a different take:
"They are afraid that when people see these eye-popping calorie numbers, they might switch to a smaller size," he said. "They feel it is gong to hurt sales."
For the record, that Double Whopper with Cheese will run you 990 calories, or more than half the recommended daily calories for an adult woman.
If a functioning adult doesn't understand that eating at McDonald's or Burger King is not beneficial for their weight and health, tough shite!
If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.
-Jacob Hornberger
Good for them, indeed! Exactly my thought. Think I’ll go get a double-double, just to show THEM. The little Thought Control Police. How about them getting a LIFE?
Applause to them! I am sick of the food police.
I was hoping that POS in the movie “SUPER SIZE ME” had a heart attack.
We all know the food at McDonald’s, BK, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, is crap...that’s why we like it.
So for those morbily obese folks....they are the canary in the mineshaft of freedom.
Doesn’t really matter whether they do or they don’t. If they do, it’s just one more thing for me to ignore.
I know that if I eat it, I will get fat. I don’t need to know how fat I will be getting. I like to be surprised.
Thanks a lot. I no longer live in California and because of you I now crave a double double with cheese and have no In-N-Out Burger chains anywhere near me. To make up for this cruelty, you must order TWO double doubles, not one.
:-)
this "center" has nothing to do with Science and even less for the public interest...their goal is to have us doing required morning excersizes
These folks are the same killjoys who advised that I should not be eating beef chimichanga's every day.... Like that needs to be said.
Hear hear. Around Silicon Valley it’s common to see the nutritional content on a poster on the wall near the counter. That’s good enough for the few of us that would want to look at it.
This has little to do with fast food, but has anybody tried to read a label lately, and especially if it is a small package? It can't be done. Basically, the label has to repeated in one or more languages. Then the UPAC code has to be large enough for the myoptic code readers to scan it. By the time all the garbage is piled onto the label the the print is impossible to read.
I am SHOCKED to learn that McDonalds food is unhealthy!!! Thank you New York liberals for educating me and setting me straight, I owe my life to liberalism.
So? I wasn't planning on eating two of them. Mmmmm... flame broiled.
How about the nanny state types getting a JOB?
Screw the calories, I want to know if there are ingredients from china!
Funny, I didn't think menus were edible.
It’s easier to let the productive ones establish and advance the society economically so they can sit on their pedistals and criticize it.
Do they think the poor b@stards in Darfur have time to ponder whether or not it’s right to list the calories of a Big Mac on a menu?
This is the sign of a society so advanced, we have time to waste being concerned with this crap.
They are worse than that. They are animal rights whackos. They want us all to be vegetarians, even though I’ve seen some funny stuff showing how many fuzzy little creatures are killed during harvesting, etc. Maybe they want us to live on water alone.
You notice that the media never mentions the SCPI’s real agenda.
Don’t worry, nanny government will FORCE them to do in the not so distant future
The BK triple whopper with cheese is my favorite. I normally have two of those with fries and a large chocolate shake.
I have no idea how many calories that is but I trust they aren’t cheating me out of any of them I paid for.
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