Dr Jonathan Wright
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Nutrition: Crazy Food Labelling Measures Focusing On The Wrong Food Groups
I was struck by a report I read recently about measures being proposed in the US at the moment... which no doubt, as always seems to happen, the UK will adopt soon after, if they go ahead.
I'm talking about a new House of Representatives bill called the Menu
Education and Labelling Act (also known as MEAL), which mandates that if you lead customers into a restaurant it's your duty to make them think.
Here's what I think: It's a terrible idea.
Something's missing
MEAL would require all chain restaurants, that have more than 20 locations - like Mc Donalds - to provide four nutrition details beside every item that appears on their menus or menu boards. So for every burger, every order of bacon & cheddar-stuffed potato skins, and every bloomin' onion ring, menus will have to reveal total calories, trans-fat, saturated fat, and sodium.
MEAL is specifically designed to 'help curb obesity,' according to its sponsor, Representative Rosa L. DeLauro. But if you read those four nutrition details again, the mainstream mindset of this would-be law is transparent.
Apparently, Rep. DeLauro appears to still believe that saturated fat intake causes obesity. So knowing what we know about the key dietary elements that lead to obesity, what are the two glaring omissions from that list? All together now:
Carbohydrates and sugars!
C'mon, Rosa, this isn't hard. Just read a few e-Alerts.
Wrong from right
So, let's say that in the course of finding its way through the legislative maze, the bill is revised to include carbs and sugars. NOW you're addressing obesity.
But there are still two huge problems with this bill: it's unnecessary and it's wasteful.
It's unnecessary because most people don't go to fast food chain restaurants for nutrition; they go for the convenience and the 'comfort food.'
Imagine you're looking over a menu at your local McDonalds or T.G.I. Friday's - whatever - and you're hungry for some chicken. You know, I know, virtually everyone knows that fried chicken with chips is going to have inferior nutritional value compared to, say, grilled chicken with steamed vegetables.
It's obvious: If you want good nutrition you choose the latter. But if you just want some comfort food, you'll probably end up with a plate of fried chicken and chips.
In other words, you're grown up. You don't need little nutrition panels to tell you which choice is healthier. And more to the point: It's not a menu's job to provide nutrition education.
The MEAL bill is also wasteful
Just imagine the cost to the taxpayer required to put these regulations in place, monitor hundreds of thousands of restaurants nationwide, and then enforce penalties for restaurants that are caught serving 10 grams of saturated fats when the menu claimed 7.
And that's just how it would hit us on the tax side if such a proposal were to be launched in the UK. As consumers, we'd also have to pay for the additional costs the restaurants incur to redesign their menus and menu boards.
But more important than this, is that the chance that all that money and effort will help curb obesity is just about nil.
While detailed nutrition labels on all food packaging are useful and
educational, they have done nothing to curb the obesity epidemic we're now facing. If those labels haven't done anything to keep the national waistline in check, it's absurdly optimistic to imagine that abbreviated menu labels will do the trick.
Let's just hope this doesn't catch on over here!
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