Subway publishes the calories of it's sandwichs (or is that sandwiches). And I appreciate it. In fact, the calorie count was a lot lower than I thought it would be. So that made me decide that I could go out and treat myself to something other than carrots and celery sticks a bit more frequently.

So in some cases it could be good for business, and definitely it is good for the consumer.

Why is Kevin trying to take away my right not to know how much mercury is in my fish.

Goddamn collectivists!

...even a medium-size Big Mac meal contains well over half the calories an average person ought to consume in an entire day.

What's the problem? Everyone in the US is well above average.

I absolutely, positively, would LOVE to have nutrition information available to me when dining out. In fact, i HAVE written to many national chain restaurants and spoken with local restaurant owners on the issue, requesting they provide this information somewhere somehow.

The issue, though, is threefold:

1. It's really really hard identifying the nutritional content of freshly-prepared dishes. There are significant allowable margins of error, but if your chef changes how they hand-whip the mayonaise the nutrition facts become less reliable. On the other hand, you can't tell me that three Taco Bell tacos are consistently enough made that they would all contain the same nutrition (or rather lack thereof) as displayed on their "Nutrition Facts". Still, that information is better than a complete lack of information.

2. The more prominent the information has to be, the more it becomes a case of "you need to make everyone else do it before I will". The first restaurant to display prominently that their Chicken Parmesan has 2,000 calories and enough salt to support sealife in a mid-sized pond WILL lose business. Unless everyone else is required to do the same.

3. Any numbers displayed, if not required, constitute a claim. If their recipe changes to make that claim invalid, they are legally responsible. They'd rather not make the claim and thus not have the liability.

That having been said, I find fast food nutrition information is readily available just about everywhere. There are a few exceptions, and often any "specials" or trial items won't be included, but if you look online beforehand you can always plan your meal, and if not many restaurants (Carl's Jr, even) have the chutzpah to have a nutritional guide nailed to the wall next to the register.

The tough places are the national chains and of course the local mom-and-pops. You just have to guess at what their ingredients are.

IMHO, I think you are wrong in thinking nutritional information won't help us reduce our consumption. I for one have been on a calorie-tracking regimen for a little over a year now, and have lost 40 pounds in that time (still on the heavy side of healthy, but no longer "obese" by definition). The HARD part is that with a little persistence you can get 90% of what you eat in a day tracked, but then that last 10% you just have to guess at. I hear people say things like, "If you are watching your calories then you don't want anything but the salad at the restaurant anyway, so as long as they list the calories on the salad that's enough". No, it isn't. Eating "right" isn't a matter of reducing what we eat to salads and grilled chicken. Sometimes you need to have the lasagna, and you need to know how that lasagna fits into your overall caloric consumption that day, and you need to know how much of that lasagna you can eat before completely blowing your totals out of the water.

Phew. Anyway, more information is good. I don't even care about it being listed on the menu, just available in the first place so I can figure out what will work for me when I sit down to order.

Will it put people off? I don't know. I think that is horrendously overblown. I mean, McDonald's even had the number of calories in their fries printed on the side of the fries box for a while (maybe they still do), and I don't think their fries sales have gone down. In the end, people just want to eat good food. To make us healthy, we just need to know when to stop.

I know you (Kevin) read the Omnivore's Dilemma recently, and the point made therein about the food industry relying on each American consuming more and more calories per day is apropos here, and indeed ignorance does fuel that. So there are counter-pressures. At the same time, I know were the menus of a half dozen local establishments enriched with nutritional information, they'd go off my "blacklist" and I'd be able to eat there again.

Ok, but why pick on McDonalds? Don't the publish nutrition info openly in their restaurants?

Ah, yes, the old "self-regulation" chestnut! Companies will always act in the public interest because the marketplace demands it! From here on in, everybody who makes this argument must be forced to provide actual real-life examples where it's, um, worked. Ever.

After all, we've had federally-mandated calorie disclosures on food for many years, and although it's opened up new marketing opportunities for purveyors of "Lite" and "Lo-Cal" fare, it hasn't had any noticeable impact on aggregate calorie consumption.

But nobody reads food labels, and no one does all the work necessary to figure out how many calories are in, say, a home cooked dinner, which would mean reading the labels of all the ingredients, weighing and measuring portions, properly accounting for leftovers, being honest about those second helpings, and so on. You'll just have to take my word for it when I tell you it takess an astonishing amount of work.

Now, compare the difficulty of that to going in to Carl's Jr or Hardees, seeing that the Six Dollar Burger (1000 calories) + onion rings (440 calories), + large coke (200 calories, assuming ice is added) comes out to 1700 calories or so, and deciding instead to eat a more modest meal, that comes to maybe 1000 calories. If even 10% of the population did this, it would surely have some kind of effect on the skyrocketed obesity rate, and skyrocketing healthcare costs.

If that argument is too involved, let's think of it another way: if the fast food companies didn't believe this would have a negative impact on their sales, why would they bother fighting it? Keeping in mind it's their business to understand consumer behavior, and judging by their sales and the nation's expanding waistlines, they're pretty good at their business, I'm going to go out on a limb and trust their judgment on this.

After reading the summary of Sullum's argument, I said to myself, "That's too idiotic for even conservatives to believe."

And then I realized it was published in Reason, the safe place on the internet for special teenagers.

I just wish consumers would demand to know the realities of how the animals they eat lived and died. Agribusiness survives because they hide factory farms.

We need to know with honesty whether their healthy option burger really is less calories the way they offer it.

I don't mind if it's on the wall by the restroom. Just make sure it tells me how many calories, how much fat, and whether it [b]intentionally[/b] contains milk, lactose, and what grains, animal products, or nuts are in it. (trace amounts amounts to nothing useful) I need to know if it'll make my buddy (lactose intolerant) in pain, my friend (allergic to milk, wheat) ill, my acquaintance (allergic to peanuts) need an epi, or my other friend (religious) horf. And it's not like my last friend (vegetarian) will be upset that the fries are cooked in lard, but it would be nice to know that.

Why don't we have a right to know what they hell they're cooking?

The big fast food chains stopped supersizing shortly after Supersize Me came out. It's no longer an option.

Crissa: Why don't we have a right to know what they hell they're cooking?

Because then we wouldn't buy the crap. See optical weenie's comment at 7:00. Reward businesses that do tell you, and that sell healthy stuff.

My pet peeve is the "servings per container" trap. Mrs. T, who's diabetic, has been bitten by that more than once, thinking she was getting 10 grams of sugar because the "servings per container: 4" was in dark blue ink on a glass bottle.

I am just going to go ahead and be a food snob here and say that I don't want to sit down at the French Laundry and read that the duck has 300 more calories than the kobe beef.

People are ignorant about pretty much EVERYTHING, no? I don't think that mere ignorance is a reason to affix stickers to everything that confounds the American citizen.

If someone is stupid enough to think that a Big Mac is a healthy choice, no amount of sticky notes is going to convince them otherwise

I'll be surprised if it ends up having much of an effect.

—Kevin Drum

It might if the waiter, upon bringing the food to the table, said loudly, "Now, who ordered the 3,000 calorie special?"

Just for clarification ya'll, the bill being considered in California is a watered down version that the Restaurant Association still hates. And it applies only to restaurants that have more than 14 outlets in the state. So, no worries during your next French Laundry visit (can I come?).

One of the main points of contention on the bill (SB 1420/Padilla) is providing information to consumers at the point of purchase (rather than just posting it on a wall or providing a paper flyer). The hope, I assume, is that folks will think twice, as an earlier poster noted, about the number of calories they'll be consuming with that big mac value deal. The CRA (restaurant assoc) fought that provision tooth and nail. They've lost to date, but the bill is still pending.

I would love to know the calories in the meals I buy.

In fact, the first time I have ever seen it was in a restaurant in Tokyo last week. I actually got the meal with the higher calorie count BECAUSE it was the higher amount.

OK, 1250 calories for a dinner, including dessert, is still on the low side but I could have lost weight with the 1065 calorie dinner.

I would like to see the calorie counts when I eat dinner in the US

Kevin,

How did you vote on Proposition 65? Isn't it the same argument? My understanding is that Proposition 65 has been considered pretty successful.

Also, what about the Restaurant Hygiene Grades in Los Angeles (to the north of you). Those have been pretty well received too.

And then I realized it was published in Reason, the safe place on the internet for special teenagers.

That's not being fair to special teenagers. Libertarians are a special sort of stupid-on-purpose -- economics, minus the game theory, minus the reality check that people actually satisfy the assumptions required for economic theory to work. (Special kids, and ordinary stupid people, deserve some slack. Stupid on purpose deserves only insults). Assumption #1 is that we know what we're consuming -- if the seller keeps secrets from the buyer, there's no guarantee that the best outcome will result.

It IS surprising how many calories, and how much salt, is loaded into many foods. And yes, I can guarantee that there's stuff I don't buy because of the ingredients, and I am sure that the seller wishes I didn't know, but because I am informed, I am better off. They're not better off, but it was their choice to sell unhealthy shit, and I still buy stuff, just not theirs.

It's not going to make a difference.

People eat because it is the easiest, cheapest stress-buster they have. Eating fatty food releases endorphins. They used to smoke, but that is even less healthy and now most have stopped.

The more stressful people's lives become the more they will eat. If you want to reduce people's weight increase the cost of food (to reduce the appeal of this stress buster versus others) and implement a stronger social safety net to reduce anxiety. Reducing income inequality would probably help too..

You probably knew this already, but that's because Political Animal readers are such a well-informed lot.

It's probably because most of us resemble Kevin's cats.

Calorie counting for restaurants may be going too far, but outlawing poisons like trans fats would seem to fall into the protecting the public health mandate of local governments.

My partner looked up the calorie counts on Jack in the Box shakes (he got a scare put into him by his doctor concerning his blood sugar levels) -- shock how high the calorie count is! He thought he was being health conscious because the shakes are dairy based (rather than something else?) ... Now he orders the small rather than the large and the vanilla rather than the chocolate. It really is a substantial calorie difference.

But nobody reads food labels, and no one does all the work necessary to figure out how many calories are in, say, a home cooked dinner, which would mean reading the labels of all the ingredients, weighing and measuring portions, properly accounting for leftovers, being honest about those second helpings, and so on. You'll just have to take my word for it when I tell you it takess an astonishing amount of work.

I read food labels, and I can tell you with excellent accuracy the approximate calories and grams of fat in anything that comes out of my kitchen, and I'm a decent cook who makes interesting and fairly complex meals. If you cook mostly with whole foods, and after you make the upfront investment in learning about nutrition, portion sizes and the calories in your favorite foods (we all use many of the same things over and over, no matter how adventurous we are), it's really not a lot of work. It's second nature to me now and adds almost no time to my shopping or preparation.

But I agree with your other points: This would have a modest effect on the public's calorie consumption were it implemented, always keeping in mind the impossibility of doing more than ballparking. Raw estimates, frankly, are worlds ahead of what people understand about what they're eating now.

I also read food labels. Mostly, I try to avoid gratuitous salt and trans-fats; I don't have the attention span/patience/time for calorie counting. I DO measure my exercise, because a little bicycle computer will do that for me. I suppose, in time, we will see similar automation for calorie counting, if there is sufficient demand.

I assume, sooner or later, that we'll also start to see calls for carbon footprint reporting. This is a case where the reporting is not necessary if we have a carbon tax (with a revenue-neutral reduction in some other tax, one hopes); with a carbon tax, we could use price as a signal instead. (Lacking an exact reporting, avoid dead mammals, deep sea fish, and sadly, shrimp. There's probably a reduced penalty for organic and grass-fed, but I don't if it is significant.)

"Yet the desires that people express in polls are often at odds with the preferences they reveal in the marketplace. The restaurant business is highly competitive. If customers really were clamoring for conspicuous calorie counts, restaurants would provide them voluntarily."

I think this got garbled in cut-and-pasting, Kevin. Isn't the correct quote:
"Yet the desires that *investment firms* express in polls are often at odds with the preferences they reveal in the marketplace. The *financial instruments* business is highly competitive. If customers really were clamoring for conspicuous *descriptions of the constituents, risks, and expected payouts of CMOs and individual mortgages*, *banks and investment banks* would provide them voluntarily."

As we know from the recent booming success in the construction sector, voluntary disclosure in an industry like this has been proven to work, and work well.

Have to agree with kevin here...the article if pretty weak stuff: "The restaurant business is highly competitive. If customers really were clamoring for conspicuous calorie counts, restaurants would provide them voluntarily."

As far as I could tell, this was their key argument...which isn't all that great, because it's not at all persausive or even coherent. E.g "why"...