Posted on 08/03/2008 8:25:52 AM PDT by mngran2
New Yorkers have been in the throes of sticker shock since this spring when the Big Apple became the first city in the country to implement a law forcing chain restaurants to post the calorie count of each food in the same size and font as the price.
Restaurants have not exhausted their legal challenges, but the city will start fining violators up to $2,000 beginning Friday, say officials with the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
While some sit-down chains and fast-food eateries are waiting until the last minute, coffee shops like Starbucks — home of the 470 calorie raspberry scone and 610 calorie cookie — have been replacing their menu boards and adding calorie tags to pastries in recent weeks. The result: Do a little eavesdropping in a New York City restaurant, and you may think you’ve stumbled into an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.
At T.G.I. Friday’s, one of the few sit-down chain restaurants to have already added calorie counts to menus, a group of young women gasped as they studied the menu, barely able to find a meal under 1,000 calories, never mind an appetizer or dessert. Both Stephanie Fowler and Lindsay Green asked about the suddenly popular Classic Sirloin — at 290 calories, it was one of the lowest calorie items on the menu — but learned the restaurant ran out by the time the dinner rush started.
Outside the Forest Hills’ Dunkin’ Donuts, Juan Restrepo, the 45-year-old owner of a construction company, said he was quitting corn muffins — 510 calories! — this time for good.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Oh balderdash. That would require the memorization of more items in more places than is feasible. Much simpler to enter the establishment of your choice and have the data available at the time of purchase.
Well, yours is a vote of 1. I’d much rather know the nutritional content. I don’t much care where it came from.
What are you talking about? When a law is passed regulating that businesses must do something that's called "regulation".
I think it's an excellent idea for restaurants to be required to wash their dishes, in fact I often choose my neighborhood diner because they wash their dishes voluntarily, but I can't imagine what makes the city think they have the right to order restauranters (the owners of private property) comply.
Without too much effort you can double that. Triple Whopper with cheese, large fries, and a large shake. Do not pass go, proceed to the cardiac ward.
Oh, I don’t think it’s all that voluntary. They have to wash their dishes or they’ll be shut down. Conservatism is not anarchy. No sane individual wants to make maintaining sanitary conditions in restaurants voluntary.
Communicable diseases are a public health concern. My voluntary dietary choices are not (although the Marxists on the Left are doing their best to make personal choices into public concerns).
Nice try at equivalency, but no dice.
Quite a load.
If we bought fuel for our cars the way we buy fuel for our bodies we couldn’t get across town.
TYPE OF DONUT
CALORIES
CARBS
FAT GRAMS
Calories in Krispy Kreme original glazed donut
200
22
12
Calories in Krispy Kreme chocolate iced glazed donut
250
33
12
Calories in Krispy Kreme chocolate iced with sprinkles
260
38
12
Calories in Krispy Kreme chocolate iced cream filled donut
350
38
20
Calories in Krispy Kreme chocolate iced custard filled donut
300
35
17
Calories in Krispy Kreme key lime pie donut
320
40
17
Calories in Krispy Kreme glazed lemon filled donut
290
35
16
Calories in Krispy Kreme glazed raspberry filled donut
300
39
16
Just a donut can have from 200 to 350 calories. yikes
Just finish each meal with a “Montezuma’s Revenge” cocktail of Mexican water, and voila! the pounds will disappear.
Life expectancy at age 20 — a measure that filters out the effects of childhood diseases — has increased 20 years since the turn of the 20th century. The numbers for the Inuit weren’t detailed enough to break out childhood disease, but their climate makes many childhood diseases far less prevalent.
It is also true that while within our lifetimes and our parents’ and grandparents’, we have cut out a lot of the lard and bacon and other former staples; but that diet was largely a relatively recent phenomenon to begin with.
All that bacon fat and beef tallow has been largely cut out, but replaced with trans fats, hydrogenated oils, and far more fried food. Before the 20th century, rich, fatty foods were daily fare only for the rich. Today, with fast food, pre-packaged meals and snacks, obesity is the primary nutritional problem among the poor.
The statement to which I was responding is that if cholesterol, etc. were really unhealthful, our ancestors would have died off. The implication is that their diets were worse, and it didn’t make them less healthy. Two false premises: They were less healthy, and our diet today is not much, if at all, healthier.
Depending on how you cook at home, the same foods you eat in a restaurant may have twice the amount of calories. I try to order most of my restaurant dishes as plain as possible and ask for certain condiments like olive oil on the side.
YAAAA-HOOO! Now THERE’S a burger. Makes the BK Triple look like a Happy Meal.
There is nothing shocking about this, to anyone who’s been on a diet and bothered to look these things up. I have no issue with the information being provided. In fact as someone who does watch my intake it is something I take into consideration so it would be nice to no longer have guess about things when I do go out.
Don’t take me for a health nut though.. I still eat my share of junk food.. just is more modest portions. The single biggest thing you can do to cut your calories at chain restraunts and fast food are simply this:
Skip the Fries, and drink a diet or water... and never hurts to cut out the mayo on your burger either.
While that’s a fine idea, you also don’t have to give up on butter and things with popcorn, just have to control your portion. ACT II Butter Popcorn now comes in 100 calorie bags.... same as the bigger bags, just smaller amount. I use this for a snack regularly.
Yea, not as generally good for me as the “light” kind, but my body doesn’t give a crap if its 100 calories from a smaller amount of popcorn with butter or 100 calories a lot more of it without. All it cares about, at least from a weight control perspective is I took in 100 calories.
The cost for the restaurant chains to figure out how many calories are in each meal was probably minimal. Many of them probably already had this information available.
I really don't see this as being any different than ingredient labelling on items at the supermarket. This just gives the consumer more information to decide what to eat. This may lead to restaurants offering healthier food options if people stop eating the high-calorie items.
There are already healthy food items on their menus.
So you want McDonald's to change their whole menu and give up the burgers & fries which is what they've made their whole reputation on?
Sheesh. This is what I meant above about Gov't enforced reduced profits.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.