by Hope Darby

Created on: September 23, 2008

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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