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A secret recipe, a family's unique contribution, a gastronomic surprise! All would be spoiled by making known exactly what is in a dish served at a restaurant.

But that is not the main reason that I would discourage the placing of too much information into a restaurant menu. Yes, caloric information would be helpful, but would it be accurate? How many chefs and cooks actually know how to determine the number of calories in a dish? How many restaurants actually own or can purchase the required equipment for measuring calories? How does a cook-or even the best chefs-repeat a recipe exactly so that the calorie count is consistently the same every time a dish is prepared?

Of course, an new industry could grow out of the need to post calories and fat grams. Nutritionists and nutritional consultants would become the new money-makers as they travel around measuring items on the menu. Would they charge extra to make emergency visits to calculate the data on the Soup of the Day or Today's Specials. Would an early harvest of green beans due to unusually beneficial weather swamp the data calculators when the fresh vegetables come on the market a week early? Or would the poor restauranteur be stuck serving the frozen beans because he did not engage a data-counter before the competition?

Of course, cooks and chefs could learn to estimate calories and fat content. Would the posting of such data be sufficient? Would the same eyeballing and rules of thumb that everyone can be taught to use in their home kitchens be considered sufficient for a written posting that, face it, would be taken as a legal document on some future court date?

Now, I do believe that hidden ingredients should be communicated to the patron that asks. Being allergic myself, I often ask, thereby sending the waiter back to the kitchen to get the needed information. A document of ingredients for everyone to peruse might be a good thing for many reasons. But good cooks often improvise with fresher ingredients. Updating the booklet would have to be a persistent priority.

Back to the rule of thumb for calorie counting. Since the counting can not be absolutely accurate, wouldn't a better idea be to educate people to make their own decisions? Of course this presupposes that most people know that eggplant casseroles are normally made with tablespoons of oil. It presupposes that everyone knows that bacon grease is a major flavor component in old-fashioned Southern greens. So

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