It’s about time! Will it make a difference in how people order? I don’t know but maybe one would think twice about ordering a dish with 47 grams of fat at Olive Garden (lasagna classico), or any other similar restaurant. Approximately two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight, and almost one-third are obese.
Large U.S. chain restaurants, criticized for their role in the country’s obesity epidemic, agreed on Wednesday to support legislation that would require them to disclose calories on their menus.
Chain restaurants with 20 or more locations would have to list on their menus the number of calories per item and would also have to make available upon request other nutritional information such as the amount of sugar, salt or cholesterol.
Chain menus could soon start counting calories | Health | Reuters
Well, if they can get this under control, then they also need to tackle the health care system. Maybe then we’ll really see some changes!
Brenda
Besides this, I’d really like to see restaurants cut down on portion sizes. They could offer everything in regular size and healthy size.
Brenda – They’re working on a health care bill, we can only hope one gets approved by the House and Senate.
Cindy – Me too! That’s a big culprit in this entire problem. It seems better restaurants do serve more “normal” serving sizes, but the chain restaurants are just ridiculous! If they alter portion sizes will their customers keep coming? Regardless, I would like to see normal portion sizes served in all restaurants.
We saw the news report on this and had several comments. One, was to note that, for us, the calorie count doesn’t really matter. We eat one full meal per day plus breakfast of toast or bagel with juice. Sometimes we add a desert. The calorie counts the news media gave as examples would not likely exceed our normal intake for a day. Also, we rarely eat the whole meal. Half of it we take home and eat the next day. Until recently the portions were simply too big to consume all at once. A couple of restaurants have reduced the amount of food by eliminating one side dish to save their profit margin but we still take home about half of it. Another was a general comment on how some things like restaurant meals or pizza seem to have gone from special events to almost everyday expectations. Little wonder we get way too many calories for our more sedentary life styles.
In addition to calories, salt content should be included in the legislation covering this identification of menu items given that we eat something like 50% more salt than we should. The combination of high calorie counts plus high salt content is a double whammy.