Legislating of Nutritional Information On Restaurant Menus

A law has recently been passed requiring restaurants to include calories and other nutritional information for food items on their menus.  More specifically:  “Calorie and other nutrition labeling will be required for standard menu items offered for sale in a restaurant or similar retail food establishment that is part of a chain with 20 or more locations, doing business under the same name, and offering for sale substantially the same menu items” (FDA).  The deadline for the calories to appear on the menus is by December 1, 2015.  Some restaurants are already complying and including nutrition information.  

The purpose of this law is that we as the most obese nation in the world will have the knowledge of what we will be putting into our mouths before we order the menu item.  The thinking being, if we knew a food had 1500 calories and 70 grams of fat, we’d want to choose a better, lower-calorie, more-healthy alternative, rather than eat nearly a whole day’s allotment of calories in one sitting.  This has yet to be proven.  I’m not sure knowing what the calories in a food are beforehand are going to matter to the people who were going to eat it anyway.  Obese people are obese because they often have triggers of emotional eating, which never does take into account how many calories they are ingesting.  

I think a wiser approach would be to offer free community classes on the subjects of knowing where one’s food comes from and teaching about nutrition and how our bodies are fueled by the food that we eat rather than throwing out random numbers on menus to some people who may not even have an idea of what a “calorie” is and why it matters.  Having been overweight and obese at varying degrees since I was a small child and having just recently lost nearly 200 pounds, my motto will always be “everything in moderation.”  That includes a 1500-calorie meal on occasions.  On the plus side of the issue, my best education was the extensive research I did into calories in versus calories out, so maybe having the calorie number staring people the face will spur them on to do their own research on nutrition.

Works Cited

 "U.S. Food and Drug Administration." Questions and Answers on the Menu and Vending Machines Nutrition Labeling Requirements. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 26 Nov. 2014. Web. 4 June 2015.