Is ignorance bliss or would you rather know?
What if the next time you open your menu at your favorite restaurant, the nutritional information (calories, fat, sodium, etc.) – is listed right there for you to consider? Would you still order the Houston Grilled Chicken Salad (34 grams of fat) or the Macaroni Grill Salmon (1,160 calories, 25 grams of fat, and 1,240 mg sodium)? How about Chili’s Melted Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream (1,270 calories and 62 grams of fat)? Do these numbers surprise you? Or would you rather not know?
New labeling mandates that take effect this year require restaurants with 20 or more outlets operating under the same name to provide nutritional information on their menus.
Why does the government think it’s important for you to know? FDA deputy commissioner for food Michael Taylor cites the “major obesity problem in this country that is due in part to excessive calorie consumption outside the home.”
Extra weight, as most of us know, comes with its own problems, including an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, and many types of cancer. In fact, obesity is about to overtake tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.
Today, 63% of American adults are overweight or obese. If we continue to gain weight, obesity will cost the US an estimated $344 billion in medical expenses by 2018.
Are you starting to see the ripple effect here? Weight, there is more.
Obese patients spend an average of $1,429 (42%) more per year on their health care than people at a healthy weight. Health economist Eric Finkelstein, co-author of The Fattening of America, says medical costs won’t go down unless Americans “lose weight by improving their diet and exercise patterns.”
So will the new nutrition labeling requirements help? Advocates, including myself, believe that if you know what’s in your food, you’re more likely to make better choices about what you put in your mouth, and therefore have a better chance of avoiding the obesity trap. However, many restaurants worry that if you know the nutritional truth, you won’t come back.
Houston’s, a popular restaurant chain with 30 locations in the US, apparently thinks you can’t handle the truth. Rather than reprint its menus to include nutritional information, the chain is changing its name. That’s how it is; Houston’s is rebranding 11 of its locations under the new Hillstone name, handing over 34 years of brand equity in its name to circumvent the new law. This way, customers can continue to enjoy their spinach and rib sauce without the burden of knowing what the caloric cost is.
So I ask you again: is ignorance bliss or would you rather know?
Maybe you think that all this government intervention is too much. But what if it could actually save lives, not to mention millions (billions) of our taxpayer dollars? Let’s see two cases.
When seat belt legislation went into effect in 1984, you’ll recall that critics argued heatedly about restrictions on our civil liberties. People were up in arms because the government told us what to do in our own cars. Well, statistics released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) show that seat belt legislation has reduced the number of injuries in traffic accidents by 45% and has reduced car accident fatalities by a fifty %. And for a country that can’t afford it, annual medical costs due to accidents run to about $11 billion, rising to $70 billion when lost productivity is factored in. Imagine what these costs would be without seat belt laws.
On the other hand, how effective has the tobacco legislation been? Cigarette advertising on television and radio was banned in 1970, when about 50% of Americans smoked. Warning labels on cigarette packages first appeared 46 years ago, and yes, we have seen a steady decline in smoking over the last four decades. Today, 20% of Americans still smoke; while still a significant number, less than half smoked in the 1970s. (The FDA has proposed new, larger warning labels designed to cover 50% of the packaging. Will they have a greater effect in reducing smoking?) )
But cigarettes and chocolate cake are not the same thing… are they? Sugar has also been shown to be highly addictive, and despite the “fun” image of a sugary dessert, too much sugar can lead to serious health risks.
Perhaps something truly miraculous will happen with the new menu labeling; perhaps food companies and restaurants, faced with new labeling laws and better-informed consumers, will provide healthier options. Now that would be a reason to go out to dinner and celebrate.
What do you think?