by Michael Collins

Created on: July 19, 2007

The idea that a restaurant should be forced to provide accurate and specific information about everything on their menu is ludicrous at best.

How many of us actually look at the nutritional information on our meals, even ones that are pre-packaged and purchased by ourselves? Not many, I'll tell you, and the ones among us that do are usually hip to what foods don't agree with them in the first place. Most people go out to a restaurant to indulge their desire for food that they cannot possibly prepare themselves - they do not use the restaurant as their daily source of nutrition. Thus, nutritional information is simply not an aspect of concern for most diners.

But this type of regulation wouldn't simply be a concession to the extremely anal, it would also hurt the restaurants themselves. If restaurants are forced by law to list specific nutritional information about their foods, you can virtually wave goodbye to any chance of an independent opening up their own. Nutritional information like calories and percentage of fat or iron don't come affixed to the materials in nature: they require laboratory analysis in order to determine, and these lab tests cost money. An independent restaurateur has neither the time, money, nor resources to devote to rigorous scientific analysis of all of his/her menu items, and it would be ridiculous to demand so, especially if they are the type of restaurant (i.e. the small diner, donut shop, or roadside truckstop) whose clientele are not in the habit of counting calories or avoiding carbohydrates.

Not only that, variety would take a nose-dive as well: restaurants that like to include "specials of the day" or add a new item to the menu every few weeks wouldn't be able to continue that practice if they had to go to the aforementioned laboratory whenever they wanted to provide a new "taste sensation." Money wouldn't be able tog o into investing in a cleaner experience, better-trained wait-staff, or renovations: they would be funneled into catering to an extremely small percentage of diners who don't eat anything unless they know how much rubidium is in it.

The most important factor to consider in all of this however, is still the one overriding aspect of human existence: choice. If a person walks into a restaurant wanting to be cautious of what they stick int heir mouths, they can ask the establishment for the information that they seek. If the restaurant doesn't have it, and this is a big enough deal to the diner, than they can simply - and watch yourselves, because we may be entering shock and awe territory, here - WALK OUT AND CHOOSE ANOTHER RESTAURANT. It's just that easy!

In the end, a law requiring full disclosure of all of a food item's chemical make-up is simply more government regulation, and it's been shown time and time again that this regulation hurts the small business, eliminates the competition among the big businesses, and decreases variety and convenience for the consumer. Restaurants and eateries should not be forced to analyze and report every molecule of their menu.

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