Possible unintended effects of posting calories in restaurants
- People with low incomes need to get the most energy for their buck, so they tend to buy higher-calorie foods. (The ability to pay more money to get less energy really is a privilege.)
- Posting calorie counts in restaurants helps people with low incomes make the most economical decisions – that is, buying what they now know to be higher-calorie food.
- This is a bad thing because high calorie = unhealthy. Who cares about poor people and what they can afford to eat?
Well, that was highly predictable.
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Funny though, I don’t look at the calorie listings on most of the food I buy even though I’m hoping to maximize my dollar. The only times I do care about calories to the dollar is when I’m buying frozen meals in the grocery store, as most of them aren’t that great of a value.
Of course, I’ve stopped eating out for the most part, so I really don’t know what my reaction would be. I’m usually more concerned with whether or not I can get chicken or fish in most places.
Since my husband has type 2 diabetes, those calorie counts don’t do diddly squat for us. What would be a LOT more helpful is carb counts per serving, as it’s the carbs that raise his blood sugars and wreak havoc with his health.
Some fast food packaging (like at McDonald’s) has all the nutrition information on it, including carb counts, but that doesn’t do much good before you order it since you only get to see the information after you’ve ordered and paid for the food.
I read all the nutrition information on food packaging when I shop for groceries, but that doesn’t do me a whole lot of good when we travel and have to eat out. Most of the time, I’m guessing what the carb content of his meals is when we eat out and then guessing on how much insulin he’s going to need to cover it (and I underestimate, because I’d rather he have blood sugar that’s a little high than risk him going really low, which can be more dangerous for him). But of course, diabetics aren’t the ones they’re worried about, it’s all of us fatasses that don’t know when to stop stuffing our faces (/sarcasm).
That’s the thing, vesta. I’d believe it was about health – helping people balance their diets according to their needs instead of just guessing – if it wasn’t just calorie counts (and sometimes fat grams), going along with the “calories are unhealthy” meme.
[...] Waistlines made a quick note about the “unintended effects of posting calorie counts in restaurants”. [...]
“Going along with the “calories are unhealthy” meme.”
Yes. Calories are BAD (booga booga). And making moralistic judgments about food is in no way contributing to the larger tendency to place people’s bodies within a reductionist (and highly discriminatory) ‘thin’=good, ‘fat’= bad framework.
And we all know that the calories in our food will effect everyone’s bodies in the same way, because our bodies are all the same, amirite?
*snark*