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| No | 50% | 1155 votes | Total: 2293 votes | |
| Yes | 50% | 1138 votes |
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Add to FavoritesRestaurants Should Not Be Required to List the Nutritional Content of Their menus. There are three excellent reasons restaurants should not be required to list the nutritional details of foods they serve. One is culinary, one is practicable, and one is philosophical.
From the culinary standpoint chefs and restaurants don't always know what the nutritional content of their meals because the menus are not some scientifically contrived formula made by a laboratory. Good cooking is like an Arts and Science University. It involves both the art of the chef and the science behind cooking. Cooking is not just following stale recipes using static ingredients that always taste the same and react the same way. I have gone to cooking school worked as a chef. I have never seen a cook on the line measure out a cup of chicken stock or a teaspoon of butter. A good constantly evaluates the meal as he or she is cooking: looking at the food, smelling the food, and tasting the food until it is just right. When the meal is complete the chef won't know whether there is a teaspoon of butter or a teaspoon and a half. It's just not possible to list the nutritional content of such meals.
One of the best things about both cooking and eating in a restaurant is the skills of the chef and the quality of the food add to the dining experience. Although most restaurants have a standard menu, it is in the daily specials that a chef and a restaurant can shine. A good chef will carefully select the ingredients for a meal, buying what looks and tastes best that day and creates a meal that may include ingredients that don't appear on the typical US Government chart of ingredients. This is as it should be. Cooking and dining out should be creative and fun, not sterile and analyzed to the point of the bland offerings of chain restaurants created by marketers and business leaders instead of chefs.
Philosophicall y restaurants should not be compelled to list the ingredients and nutritional values of the meals they serve because it is not the place for government to demand they do so. During the early days of the United States the founding fathers justified establishing a new government by referring to the need for the common safety against violence from enemies. They did not mention that citizens should give up their rights to provide dietary information. Unfortunately the government has started to change its role. The government no longer seems content to help provide for the common safety, but now inserts itself into the most intimate parts individual lives. The United States Constitution carefully specifies what the role of government should be. The Constitution does not give the government a paternalistic role to protect all people from all possible harms.
It is impracticable for there to be a government law or rule that demands all restaurants report the nutritional content and values of the foods they serve. Laws only serve a purpose when enforced. To enforce this regulationwould require daily monitoring of all meals served at all restaurants to all diners. There simply are not enough government employees to check the menus of all the food establishments with their jurisdiction. There are far more important causes for the Center of Disease Control and state and local health departments for them to check on ingredients in such detail. There are already too many unenforced laws on the books to add more laws to be ignored.
Finally, a question should be asked before this or any law is implemented. What problem is the proposed law supposed to solve? What problem will listing the ingredients and nutritional content of a restaurant's menu solve?
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Yes
I've read several of the "No" articles on this topic, and they all seem to revolve around the idea that "If you don't know what you're eating, then you're not smart enough to be going to a restaurant in the first place." Quite frankly, that is a ludicrous argument and completely off the mark.
The fact of the matter is, you DON'T know what you're eating when you go to a restaurant. No matter how many calorie guides you take along with you, there is no way of knowing how the food is prepared. A side dish of carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and squash can run in the hundreds of calories thanks to the copious butter used in the cooking process.
Restaurants use tricks to make food look pretty, taste better, and cook easier. A coating of butter makes vegetables shiny and fish juicy. A dollop of lard in the cooking oil gives any type of battered foods that golden-brown color we like so much (think of your favorite chicken tenders!) Cooking with high-calorie oil gives food more flavor with less time spent seasoning, thus helping productivity. I know these tricks; I've worked in the restaurant business. I also know that what would run at 10g fat were it to be prepared at home, can easily run 30g fat in a restaurant.
The only way to know the nutritional value of foods that you do not personally prepare yourself is to have it listed by the people who do prepare it. You show me a person who regularly eats out, and as far as they know, eats "healthfully" in restaurants, and I guarantee you that, compared to a person eating the exact same foods prepared at home, the restaurant-eater will be taking in at least 800 extra calories per meal.
For people who don't believe that restaurants pull shady tricks to secretly up the calorie-count of foods for aesthetic and functional purposes, let me ask you this: if the restaurants had nothing to hide, why do they have a problem with showing the numbers? You don't see Subway backing down from the challenge.
In all honesty, adding the nutritional value wouldn't cause much change in consumer selection. People go out to eat to treat themselves to an indulgence, to throw dietary caution to the winds and enjoy decadent food on a nice evening out. What adding the numbers would do, however, would be to help people accommodate these excursions more easily. If Sally knows she consumed 2,000 calories in her meal tonight, she can account for it tomorrow morning at the gym.
Not to mention the benefit nutritional data would provide for people with health issues such as diabetes. Depending on cooking style, a food that isn't typically considered to have a high sugar content could very easily be enough to harm a diabetic.
So really, there is no good justification for the hesitation of restaurants to make this information available. Yes, people may gasp when they first realize that their favorite appetizer packs a whopping 700 calories and their beloved steamed veggies heft 5g of fat. But it's safe to say that these numbers won't stop the average person from ordering their faves. After all, every American knows how horribly unhealthy Big Macs are, but you don't see the McDonald's corporation filing for bankruptcy, now do you?
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