We all know that Big Macs and Venti Mochachinos are bad for us, but how many of us would still reach for one if we saw its 540 calories (261 of which are from fat) posted on the menu? America is about to find out – a facet of the new health care legislation that President Obama signed into law on Tuesday creates a new requirement for chain restaurants with more than 20 stores to post calorie counts on their menus. It will start going into effect as soon as 2011, and lawmakers hope that it will help Americans slim down both by inspiring better food choices and by pressuring chains to reduce calorie counts.
A similar law is already in place in New York City and will go into effect in several other states, including California and Oregon, in 2011. Kelly D. Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, thinks that this is “an historic development….when people eat away from home they eat more and they eat worse. And part of the reason may be because they don’t know what’s in fast foods, and they’re often shocked to find out.”
Surprisingly, restaurant chains decided to back the federal move, which is part of how it managed to work its way into the health care bill. The bigger chains have fought this kind of legislation for years, but it has been a losing battle. One federal standard will be easier, and cheaper, for them to deal with than the patchwork of state laws that are about to go into effect.
Will knowing what the calorie damage is stop America from eating badly? Maybe, maybe not. Some people will almost certainly ignore the new caloric information. But advocates of the law say that Americans have the right to know what they’re putting in their mouths. “You don’t need a study that proves anything,” Mr. Brownell says. “You just have a right to know.”
