by Terpsichore

Created on: June 10, 2009

It's actually not only the calorie count that should be included on menus of chain restaurants - it should also include the ingredients and sugar and carbohydrate counts.

Whether it will change someone's mind from ordering the food they were thinking of ordering is not the point. The point is "informed consent". Many, probably most, people have no idea of the calorie, fat, and/or sugar content in the foods and drinks they choose at restaurants, chain or fancy.

It's appalling that in an era of historically unequaled problems with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other health issues, that restaurant menus don't at the least give people the information they could use to choose the least "toxic" items. Perhaps if enough people started to choose the foods with lower calories or less fat or less sugar or started to ask for healthier choices, chain restaurants would take the next step to offer them.

Having gone online to check the ingredients, calories, fat, sugar, and carbohydrate content of a number of food choices, from Starbucks to Applebee's and others, it is surprising to see how easy it is to be completely wrong in estimations - to think that your choices have much fewer calories or much less fat or sugar than they do contain. It is a real eye-opener when the facts are staring you in the face.

We need to educate people. The problems will simply perpetuate if we don't do anything, and a requirement like this is not outrageous. People do need to take responsibility for their actions (including food choices), but it doesn't hurt to provide information that may help them realize they've been making poor choices.

The fast-food/healthy food choice issues are not simple ones. This is a complex combination of factors, not the least of which include convenience and cost. There is no one, simple answer, but information like this can lead to more responsible choices. Taxpayers pay the price for the results of the poor choices - the health problems that come from a lifestyle of eating badly. If you follow the thread, it leads to the higher costs of health care, the problems in the work place with absenteeism due to health-related issues, and the health issues occurring at younger and younger ages.

Will requiring chain restaurants to put calorie counts on their menus solve these problems? Of course not, but that is one, reasonably simple action that can be done as one piece of the solutions we need to find.

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