Calorie Labeling and the Dunch Problem
I wrote earlier today about the problem of large portion sizes in which many of us who might have one kind of desire to consume fewer calories nonetheless find ourselves drawn toward high-calorie orders in the moment.* Ezra Klein’s latest column in the print Post also tackles this subject and reports on the idea that mandatory nutritional labeling could make a surprisingly large difference:
We’re still waiting for the full data from New York’s experiment. But the researchers there shared unpublished numbers with the County of Los Angeles Public Health Department, which was preparing an analysis in case Los Angeles wanted to follow New York’s lead. Based on those numbers, Los Angeles researchers settled on a “conservative” estimate: 10 percent of chain restaurant patrons would order meals that were merely 100 calories lighter.
Surprisingly, that mild change in behavior has a huge and immediate effect: It would avert 38.9 percent of the county’s expected weight gain in the next year. If 20 percent of patrons order meals with 150 fewer calories, it would avert 116 percent of the expected weight gain, which is to say that the County of Los Angeles would actually lose weight.
Unhelpfully, the print column does not include this useful table which Ezra has previously blogged:
Now of course you’ll hear a libertarian argument to the effect of, “if people really wanted to know this stuff the market would respond automatically” which I think you’d have to say was naive at best. I do think that part of the key to making this have the desired effect is to be crude and obvious with the labels:
Chain restaurants will have to list caloric information on their menus and menu boards. Not behind the desk, or off to the side, or up on the ceiling. Where you can see it. New York, among other cities, has already instituted that policy. Every Starbucks in Manhattan now must post the calories in a MochaFrappaWhatsIt right next to the drink name.
What seems really wrongheaded about the NYC law is to limit its effect to chain restaurants. If the data on this kind of very soft paternalism looks promising, then I’d want to see its scope expanded.
* I was talking to Neil Sinhababu recently and he usefully drew a distinction between desires you would attribute to someone even if he was asleep at the time (”John wants to lose weight, find a better job, and pay down his student loans”) and desires you might attribute to someone in the moment (”John wants to hang out at the bar for another two hours and drink more beer”).
115 Responses to “Calorie Labeling and the Dunch Problem”
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July 15th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
You need to limit it to chains because it’s expensive to measure the calories in food. If a mom-and-pop ice cream store wants to make blueberry because they saw some good cheap fresh berries in the market, you don’t want to require them to send things out to an expensive testing lab.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
A labeling law could have even broader beneficial effects, because it changes the behavior of companies as well as individuals.
If you have to put the number of calories next to each item on your menu, the company will have an incentive to produce a slightly lower-fat version of their Butterburgers or Creamacinnos. Even if it’s just a matter of trimming 1230 cals down to 1199, it might make a difference at the margin.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
One caution here is that even though it would be great to reduce the number of calories in most people’s intake, there is a danger of pressuring the businesses to use more harmful alternatives. An example would be using Aspartame in Diet Sodas which apparently (it’s amazingly tough to get hold of a conclusive study either way) is more harmful than plain sugar.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Now of course you’ll hear a libertarian argument to the effect of, “if people really wanted to know this stuff the market would respond automatically”
A libertarian who thought about it more than a knee-jerk reaction would see it’s eliminating an asymmetrical information problem preventing consumers from making informed transactions.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
ben raises the obvious point about how hard it is to do this for small restaurants. Actual calorie testing is not feasible. But maybe some kind of estimate is possible. Rather then measure the calories, we could establish estimates for the ingredients. Perhaps the USDA could set up a web-based calculator where you punch in a recipe and it spits out a calorie content. It would have a high margin of error, obviously, but it still would be somewhat useful. It would certainly make it clear to people that the slice of cheesecake is more fattening than the bowl of fresh fruit.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I look forward to the day when Applebees has a 999 calorie menu.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
What you and the Ethical Werewolf are both talking about is the problem that is grimly familiar to psychologists like myself: the human brain is hard-wired to act on short-term, immediate reinforcement, even when the long-term consequences are potentially very negative. Thus, we drink/overeat bad foods/use drugs/ride motorcycles without helmets/drive too fast/buy stuff we can’t afford/etc. Unfortunately, the ever-increasing complexities of our era exact higher and higher penalties for our difficulties in postponing immediate reinforcement in the interest of reaching long-term goals. We have a variety of ways of addressing this problem, but they often don’t work.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Forget calories. Mostly, I wish that all chain restaurants had to have lists of their INGREDIENTS immediately available on demand.
I’m a smart enough consumer that I know a burger without cheese will be marginally less bad for me than a burger with cheese (in WW terms, actually, it’s the cheese that really gets you) but I’d really strongly prefer to know that default, for a given store, includes mayo, so I can know to ask for it without that, as well. Or I’d like to know that the low-calorie drink is low-calorie because it contains Aspartame (which makes me unpleasantly and significantly ill fairly quickly after very small amounts). And that doesn’t even get into the issues of people with food allergies (particularly egg, gluten, soy — the stuff that’s in everything).
The other downside of calorie labeling is that it gives people who can’t mind their own business even more invective to fling at those who are having an unhealthy splurge. Yes, I *know* that a grande mint mocha frappuccino has eight million calories in it. In fact, I knew that without reading the board, or without you pointing it out to me! It’s also the only dessert I’m having this week and I worked out for 45 minutes last night to “earn” it.
Ah, well. No amount of legislation, and no lack of legislation, can stop people from being assholes.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
While I appreciate your effort to co-opt McArdle’s habit of creating ridiculous straw men so you can hang other peoples’ chosen political self-identifier around their neck, you’re better than this.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Karl, lmgtfy:
From http://www.reason.com/news/show/127126.html
July 15th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I stand corrected. Never underestimate the libertarian tendency to volunteer for self-parody.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
“Surprisingly, that mild change in behavior has a huge and immediate effect: It would avert 38.9 percent of the county’s expected weight gain in the next year.”
Matt, I’m surprised you didn’t spot this non-sequiter. Most of the time, if people eat less than usual at one meal, they will mostly or completely make up for it at another meal.
Humans have this thing called appetite, which is influenced by blood levels of sugars and other chemicals, as well as stomach distension, which lets them know when they are straying from their usual caloric intake. Having the calorie info printed out is fine, but I doubt it will have much impact on people’s waistline.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Most of the time, if people eat less than usual at one meal, they will mostly or completely make up for it at another meal.
I don’t necessarily think this is true. My understanding is that a lot of people, especially the types that regularly eat at chain restaurants, eat even when they’re not hungry, and usually eat more than they need to fill them up. The reason we’re so fat is because we constantly eat more than our body would otherwise tell us we needed.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
@9-11: Hill-f*ckin-LARious.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Strange. The desire I have to hang out at the bar and drink beer seems much more regular to me than the desire to lose weight or pay down my student loans. If ever, those ones only hit me once in a while.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Let’s be fair to the libertarian point of view. MY chose probably the most fattening lunch you can purchase at Potbelly’s as his example. PBs has also released a line of “skinny” sandwiches. As a consumer, I can choose the skinny turkey with mustard, instead of the ultra-huge meatball, and I can buy a bottle of water instead of a milkshake. That saves me probably close to 1000 calories and probably a dollar or more (I’m not sure what milkshakes cost, but skinny sandwiches are like 50 cents cheaper).
Your policy proposal is great if your underlying philosophy is that people are stupid and weak and need you to protect them from their own desires. And rest assured, the more we protect them, the more they’ll need it. However, left to my own devices, and without caloric information on the menu, I usually get a skinny turkey and water.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
You need to limit it to chains because it’s expensive to measure the calories in food. If a mom-and-pop ice cream store wants to make blueberry because they saw some good cheap fresh berries in the market, you don’t want to require them to send things out to an expensive testing lab.
You don’t need to send something to a lab to get a reasonable estimate of nutritional content. I’d be surprised if that’s even generally how the large chain restaurants do it. Instead, there are tables published by the FDA and others with the nutritional content of various foods and ingredients.
To find the calorie content for “mom’s blueberry buckle” to write on the whiteboard with the other daily specials, you’d just need to type the ingredients and their quantities into any number of websites or programs that do just that: “1 cup sugar, 1 pound blueberries, 1 cup white flour, etc.; 10 servings”, then out comes 400 calories/serving, or whatever.
That’s pretty easy, not a huge burden for even the smallest establishment– worst case, for really small vendors or those without computers, the city could have a couple of operators who could take the recipes over the phone and do the calculation for you.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
I’m a big fan of caloric labelling (I’m quite certain it’ll have a causal impact on my choices), but I think it’s wise to retain a healthy degree of skepticism about the direct, measurable link to wait loss, even in the broad statistical agreggate level. Many people might eat more later, as Jim W. suggests. Furthermore, maybe the people who’ll choose fewer calories are already pretty fit and don’t have weight to lose. Some people have rapidly adjusting metabolisms that respond to changes in caloric intake to maintain current weight. Others might substitute better eating habits for less exercise. Other inervening variables might contribute to aggregate weight loss or gain in LA County this approach couldn’t measure.
Normally, without reading the study, I’d assume that there was some effort to take some of the obvious problems with this extrapolation into the account, but the “obesity science” side of public health data has been pretty bad on this front consistently, so I’m not sure the benefit of the doubt is warranted.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
What a great boon for big chains this could be! If this starts to get traction beyond a few big cities, here is how it will work out: big chain restaurants will first oppose it entirely, and then work with legislators for a “compromise” which will ensure that small businesses get no special treatment And since a big company’s scale advantages make calorie testing and labeling very cheap for them, but very expensive for their small competitors, small restaurants will go out of business (which they do often enough already) making McDonalds and Starbucks even more profitable! Congratulations liberals, you favor big business just as much as the GOP.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Yeah, symeon, because obviously the federal government is all about fucking over small businesses.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
As a libertarian all I ask is that I’m not forced to see how many calories are in my food. Something along the lines of food sold at grocery stores is fine the information is easily accessible to those who want it but equally easy for those who don’t want to know to maintain ignorance. At sit down restaurants requiring the nutritional information to be publish in the back of the menu seems reasonable. Most chain fast food place already have the information easily accessible for those who want it.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Humans have this thing called appetite, which is influenced by blood levels of sugars and other chemicals, as well as stomach distension, which lets them know when they are straying from their usual caloric intake. Having the calorie info printed out is fine, but I doubt it will have much impact on people’s waistline.
That’s true, to a degree, but research has shown that major elements of appetite and satisfaction are purely psychological. Put the same amount of food on a smaller plate, and people feel more satisfied at the end of a meal, for example. Or feed people soup out of a “bottomless” bowl and they eat 3 times as much without feeling any more full.
Unfortunately, the chemical triggers for our appetites are influenced more by perceptions, habits and emotions than by the actual quantity of food consumed. Fortunately, that also means those perceptions and habits are amenable to manipulation. There’s no reason to believe it would be impossible to get everyone to reset their expectations down a couple hundred calories a day.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Very smart of you Mike! Now, tell us how many calories you saved.
The broader point here is that this is not a question of protecting “stupid” people from their choices, but giving everyone specific info about trade-offs. For me the skinny turkey is much less satisfying than the meatball, so if I am only saving 20 calories, then I’m not interested. However, If I’m saving 300 calories, then I might consider it.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
I live in New York city and am very grateful for the law requiring caloric labeling. (For one, it stopped me from ordering some sort of peanut-buster-ice-cream-splosion at a Brooklyn Cyclones game, when I saw it was 880 calories.)
I don’t understand the libertarian objection to this: You are not forcing people to make a decision, you are simply providing them with information that the restaurant might normally obscure or withhold. Armed with this information the consumer makes a more informed, but no less free, choice.
Of course, you are “forcing” the restaurant to provide the information, in the way that we also “force” restaurants not to serve us rat crap in our food. I am thankful, too, for that indirect infringement on my liberties.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
As a libertarian all I ask is that I’m not forced to see how many calories are in my food.
This seems like a strange request even for a libertarian.
I can see a libertarian argument against requiring businesses to label things. An economically naive one, to be sure, but that’s par for the libertarian course.
But to say that the labeling just shouldn’t be too highly visible, in case certain people’s sensibilities might be offended? Or so that they don’t feel guilty about eating ice cream? That’s a pretty weird argument for a libertarian to be making, I think.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I live in NYC. The calorie posting rule doesn’t seem to have caused any problems or hardships for the chains who have to comply (or at least they’ve done a lousy job of publicizing their problems).
July 15th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
This type of regulation, while seemingly beneficial, will probably completely miss the point because its’ based on the assumption that calorie volume causes obesity irrespective of the macronutrient breakdown of said calories and their micronutrient availabilities. 500 calories of onion rings and 500 calories of fish and produce aren’t the same from the perspective of your body and hormone system which signal your appetite.
These types of regulations will probably have the same negative effect that our low-fat mania had a generation ago before there was a huge obesity epidemic. There wasn’t much of a national obesity issue until some nutrition researchers convinced the government that fat is bad and we should thus we should all eat low fat diets, how’d that work out? We started obsessing over calorie volume, appetite be damned and that didn’t work either.
I think a the failure of these initiatives stems from their moral overtones around looking at obesity as a result of sinful gluttony that must be reformed through virtuous suffering (reducing calories and dieting.) If we saw it as a problem of our hormone systems having a hard time dealing with huge volumes of artificially cheap, processed carbohydrates, we may start to see a solution… Of course the conclusion would be to end far subsidies for corn and soy.
People who maintain leanness for their lifetimes (lean and thin aren’t quite the same), typically don’t count calories, don’t measure their daily food intake and don’t punish themselves for treating themselves. They do eat lots of produce, avoid processed food that comes in boxes, walk around a lot and engage in other physical activities.
All this will do is provide jobs for more certified nutritionists who will continue to dole out their nonsense information.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Most chain fast food place already have the information easily accessible for those who want it.
I’ve never once seen a calorie listing at a drive-thru menu. A few places have it listed in very tiny print on a poster somewhere on the restaurant. A few have brochures somewhere. Many times you have to ask the person behind the counter, who has to find the manager to get the brochure from the back, all the while people behind you are upset.
What you, as a libertarian, should realize is that restaurants largely don’t want to publicize their calorie information. If forced to, they prefer to do it in a way so that as few customers as possible see it. Because they’re well aware that there’s going to be some sticker shock as people see exactly how many calories are in their food, and some percentage of them will decide that maybe they shouldn’t eat out so much.
The back-of-the-menu compromise sounds decent enough, though. I’m not sure how you’d do that at a fast food/drive-thru place.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
People who maintain leanness for their lifetimes (lean and thin aren’t quite the same), typically don’t count calories, don’t measure their daily food intake and don’t punish themselves for treating themselves. They do eat lots of produce, avoid processed food that comes in boxes, walk around a lot and engage in other physical activities.
This is true. But for an average person like myself, who’s maybe 30 pounds overweight and trying to lose it, it’s helpful to have calories listed. Several times there’s been some fish or chicken dish at a restaurant where the sauce is significantly more calories than I’d have expected, and if nothing else it helps with portion control. I’m a lot less likely to order an appetizer or dessert if I see that big 800 number staring at me, because I know that’s 90 minutes at the gym. And sure, everyone knows salads are healthier, but when I was at Chili’s the other day a friend and I both ordered one. We looked them up when we got back and found mine was 1250 and his 620. I’d have definitely gotten the other one had that been listed on the menu.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Seattle has a calorie-labeling regulation too.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
This type of regulation, while seemingly beneficial, will probably completely miss the point because its’ based on the assumption that calorie volume causes obesity irrespective of the macronutrient breakdown of said calories and their micronutrient availabilities.
Are you saying there is some magic combination of protein, fat, carbohydrate and ‘micronutrients’ that a mildly active individual could consume 12,000 calories a day worth of and not gain weight? That’s silly.
Whatever the nutrient composition, gaining weight is still fundamentally about calories in minus calories out. It’s obviously important to get vitamins and the right simple carb/complex carb/protein/fat combination too, but to a first order approximation weight gain is about calories.
It’s also a happily convenient single number to put on menus. And the practical effect is often going to be to influence the composition of foods, not just the quantity — pushing people toward relatively more satisfying whole grains, proteins and vegetables, and away from large portions and calorically “expensive” empty sugars and fats. (Look at CapitolQ’s and Adam’s anecdotes.)
And while I agree with you about ending subsidies, that’s not anywhere near a sufficient solution on its own. Food would still be extremely cheap even in a post-subsidy world. Changing our collective eating habits has to involve a multi-pronged approach.
(Incidentally, it’s slightly odd to complain about “moral overtones” and “virtuous suffering” and then go on to talk about the virtues of “people who maintain leanness for their lifetimes”.)
July 15th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I have a far more personal liberty as being far more important than business liberty. Requiring restaurants to make nutritional information available to those who want it enables individuals to make informed decisions and strike me a reasonable. Forcing individuals to see information they don’t want is a clear attempt to get individuals to change their behavior and thus a violation of personal liberty.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
The beginning of my comment should read “I have a far more concern for personal liberty”
July 15th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
I think there could be a healthy libertarian argument that the lack of information about calorie content represent a market information asymetry. In this case publishing calorie content may actually mae the market function better. The more information people have the more their purchasing decisions reflect their actual tastes.
Now imposing restrictions on the calories that restaurants can serve in a single meal. That would drive a libertarian crazy.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Yeah, symeon, because obviously the federal government is all about fucking over small businesses.
Is this meant to be sarcastic or not? It’s pretty well established that broad federal regulations have a disproportionate impact on small businesses, just like something like a flat tax would have a bigger impact on lower income individuals. Symeon’s point is pretty standard fare – lobby the government to treat big and small business equally, which gives the large business an advantage at the margin.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Forcing individuals to see information they don’t want is a clear attempt to get individuals to change their behavior and thus a violation of personal liberty.
Obviously it’s an attempt to get individuals to change their behavior. If they don’t eat so damn much, we wouldn’t have to spend so much on health care.
But a violation of liberty? That’s a real stretch. The citizens of NYC have less liberty and freedom than the rest of the country because they’re shown the calorie amounts in their food? I’m having a hard time understanding the logic there. That’s like saying people have a right not to know that products are defective and could be harmful, because some people might not care.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Symeon’s point is pretty standard fare – lobby the government to treat big and small business equally, which gives the large business an advantage at the margin.
Well, yes, this is pretty standard. It’s why WalMart is all about the employer mandate in health care. But NYC exempted non-chain businesses for exactly this reason, and that’s certainly a reasonable standard to use. I don’t see “lobbyists might make bad changes” as a reason not to do something good, since you could apply that to basically everything.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Well, yes, this is pretty standard. It’s why WalMart is all about the employer mandate in health care. But NYC exempted non-chain businesses for exactly this reason, and that’s certainly a reasonable standard to use. I don’t see “lobbyists might make bad changes” as a reason not to do something good, since you could apply that to basically everything.
I’d go even further. While I’m sympathetic to small businesses, I definitely don’t think they should be exempt from calorie labeling. As much as we complain about the proliferation fo chains, a LOT of food still comes from small and independent establishments. And a 1900 calorie cheese burger doesn’t make you any skinnier just because it’s sold at a local diner and not a TGI Friday’s.
I think, in the first place, calorie labeling is just not particularly onerous. It’s pretty easy to calculate (plus we could even offer some government assistance) and write it on the menu.
Second, what you’re really complaining about is economies of scale. It’s cheaper for chains to do just about EVERYTHING, from designing menus to negotiating with suppliers to opening new locations. To the extent that those advantages are unfair, or that we might aesthetically prefer more diverse and community oriented establishments, that can be accomplished more directly through other means. Calorie labeling exemptions don’t seem compelling.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
jack lecou says: It’s cheaper for chains to do just about EVERYTHING, from designing menus to negotiating with suppliers to opening new locations. To the extent that those advantages are unfair, or that we might aesthetically prefer more diverse and community oriented establishments, that can be accomplished more directly through other means. Calorie labeling exemptions don’t seem compelling.
Yes, but it was probably a lot more within the realm of the politically possible to pass this law for chain restaurants but not for mom n’ pops.
Then once everyone gets used to having that information at the chains, they’ll start bitching about why they can’t see that info at any restaurant, and eventually you’ll see it everywhere.
The art of the possible, and all that.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
The art of the possible, and all that.
Agreed. And I hope the process goes that way. But it’s important to push back so people don’t start seeing those exemptions as some kind of right small businesses should be entitled to.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
That’s pretty easy, not a huge burden for even the smallest establishment
Well, it’s less of a burden than sending food to a lab to be analyzed, but think about this realistically. Most people are lousy at math and wouldn’t be able to do the stats reliably. So there would either be a lot of miscalculations or a new cottage industry of consultants who analyze your recipes for you, which would not only be a big expense for a small restaurant, but also a big hassle. Say goodbye to experimenting in the kitchen or a Catch of the Day if each new recipe had to be analyzed.
The fact of the matter is that it’s just as much work and expense to analyze one new burger recipe that a shop owner comes up with in order to get rid of a surplus of teriyaki sauce and expects to sell 20 units of as it does for Carl’s Jr. to analyze a new teriyaki burger that they plan to sell 1,000,000 units of. Running the calorie counts only makes sense at an economy of scale.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Plus, it’s hard enough to get enough health inspectors to restaurants for us to be assured that we aren’t getting e coli contamination. Having them check to make sure the calorie counts are accurate would just be sisyphean.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Forcing individuals to see information they don’t want is a clear attempt to get individuals to change their behavior and thus a violation of personal liberty.
Good God that is dumb. Giving consumers the option to access information about a transaction is always a good thing. Competitive markets cannot function otherwise. Withholding vital information makes consumers preferences dependent not on the product, but more on the company’s ability to deceive or obscure. Finding out my salad is 4 billion calories after I eat it may be good or bad depending on how I view the information, but one needs available information in order to exercise personal autonomy.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Honestly, Mike, I’m just not sure that most people realize that – to pick one example that I used to actually serve – the shrimp pasta at Ruby Tuesday packs 1030 calories.
I have never, ever, ever, not once in my life, under any circumstances, felt harmed by having too much information made available to me. I don’t take it as an insult. I don’t know what kind of ostrich’s-head-in-the-sand mentality you’d need for that to be the case. If you feel insulted by the presence of nutritional information, I assure you that you have the right to ignore it. Even if a government bureaucrat stands right over your shoulder and reads it aloud, you can stick your fingers in your ears, or hum a Motley Crue song, or whatever.
Am I missing something here?
July 15th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
re: libertarian,
Maybe the market will provide you with a special no-calorie menu that you can ask for to protect yourself from the scary health information. Or maybe you are being a tool.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Well, it’s less of a burden than sending food to a lab to be analyzed, but think about this realistically. Most people are lousy at math and wouldn’t be able to do the stats reliably. So there would either be a lot of miscalculations or a new cottage industry of consultants who analyze your recipes for you, which would not only be a big expense for a small restaurant, but also a big hassle. Say goodbye to experimenting in the kitchen or a Catch of the Day if each new recipe had to be analyzed.
The fact of the matter is that it’s just as much work and expense to analyze one new burger recipe that a shop owner comes up with in order to get rid of a surplus of teriyaki sauce and expects to sell 20 units of as it does for Carl’s Jr. to analyze a new teriyaki burger that they plan to sell 1,000,000 units of. Running the calorie counts only makes sense at an economy of scale.
Even small restaurants need to have a handle on their supplies and margins: X pounds of farm fresh strawberries and Y pounds of sugar make enough jam for Z orders of “grandma’s strawberry pancakes” at $8.95 each.
Calculating the calories is just a matter of punching X, Y and Z into a website and writing down the result.
Even specials and “catch of the day” aren’t that hard. After you get back from the fishmonger, look up 3 oz of “Joe’s Hollandaise” and 7 oz of “halibut, grilled”. Write the answer on the white board for the night.
I’d be open to giving smaller restaurants more leeway in terms of deviations and errors, particularly for things like daily specials, and I’ve already said that some kind of assistance program would be useful. But the bottom line is that the calculations are just not difficult enough to justify the health costs of a blanket exemption.
(I’m not saying there aren’t economies of scale. There obviously are. But the fact that it costs the same to calculate the calories of 20,000,000 burgers as it costs to calculate the calories in 20 doesn’t change the fact that it costs almost nothing to make the calculation in either case.)
July 15th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Obviously it’s an attempt to get individuals to change their behavior. If they don’t eat so damn much, we wouldn’t have to spend so much on health care.
But a violation of liberty? That’s a real stretch. The citizens of NYC have less liberty and freedom than the rest of the country because they’re shown the calorie amounts in their food? I’m having a hard time understanding the logic there. That’s like saying people have a right not to know that products are defective and could be harmful, because some people might not care.
I believe that any government action no matter how minor that attempts to influence behavior is a violation of personal liberty. What would you think of Alabama passed a law requiring anyone having an abortion listen to testimony from woman who had an abortion and latter regretted it? This is no different.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Just to drive the point home:
There are iphone apps that let diners do this calorie calculation for themselves in a couple of minutes.
The chef or restaurateur will obviously have somewhat better info on the ingredients and quantities involved, but otherwise I would expect that this level of accuracy is fine. And it’ll only take them a couple of minutes.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Forcing individuals to see information they don’t want is a clear attempt to get individuals to change their behavior and thus a violation of personal liberty.
Forcing individuals to not have to confront the consequences of their choices is far more paternalistic than giving them information to make a rational decision.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
What would you think of Alabama passed a law requiring anyone having an abortion listen to testimony from woman who had an abortion and latter regretted it? This is no different.
Umm. Yes it is.
For one thing, calorie information is factual and objective, it’s not analogous to emotional anecdotal testimony. While I wouldn’t support “listening to testimony”, I absolutely support doctors informing women in a direct way about the objective health risks of the procedure.
There’s also a substantially different public health interest involved.
July 15th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Good God that is dumb. Giving consumers the option to access information about a transaction is always a good thing. Competitive markets cannot function otherwise. Withholding vital information makes consumers preferences dependent not on the product, but more on the company’s ability to deceive or obscure. Finding out my salad is 4 billion calories after I eat it may be good or bad depending on how I view the information, but one needs available information in order to exercise personal autonomy.
This isn’t about giving people option to access information it’s about forcing the information on them whether they like it or not in an attempt to shame them into making healthier choices. It took me about 20 seconds to access nutritional information on McDonalds website and the information is also available on posters in their restaurants it easy for those who want the information to access it. This is forcing me to see the information against my will.
July 15th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I’m open to the argument that ignorance can be a valuable commodity. I would have thought this idea presents a lot of problems for libertarians though.
Often, for illogical, emotional reasons, I’d rather not know what time it is (to know how late I am, for example). Does this imply that clocks shouldn’t be publicly displayed?
July 15th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
That’s great you have such quick and easy access to the McDonalds Web site! This morning, I merely turned over the place mat when I chose to eat a huge, delicious egg McMuffin. Later today, I’ll hopefully avoid heart disease by doing some exercise. The guy next to me ate a couple more and he looked like he probably doesn’t exercise much. And that’s his choice!
But as opposed to us both doing nothing as was the case with no information, now someone knows how to act in a healthful way. The obese man’s minor discomfort about the existence of such information is a small price to pay for aggregated health benefits in people making better choices. These health benefits come with a side of lower health care costs and a more knowledgeable populace. All good stuff.
For those innocent eyes who wish to keep on eating those egg McMuffins without consequence, I’m sick of paying for you to end up in the ER with a heart attack. Rather than get the government to round up the morbidly obese in Obama exercise camps, it’d be great if people were more informed about the choices they make. In nearly every other industry this is possible. In going out to eat, the choice is extremely difficult.
July 15th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
I live in NYC and have found the labeling to be very helpful and effective. It has impacted my choices many times and I don’t even go to fast food places much. Granted, I’m a reformed dieter, and will always be worried about my weight (although currently fine), but I do think seeing some of the numbers is quite sobering and could impact choices, even for someone without my baggage.
And the comment above about intuition not necessarily helping in guiding choices is right on the money. Things like salads can be very high in calories, depending on the dressing, add-ins, etc., like the 1,000 calorie salads at Baja Fresh. Similarly, I think the basic hamburger at McDonald’s is much healthier (lower fat and calories) than the chicken nuggets, even though people might think chicken is the better option.
It would be interesting to see if in the long run, some high-calorie items are phased out where the calorie counts are posted, because people are too scared to order the thing or the publicity is so bad. (Kind of how McDonald’s eliminated some of its “super” sized items after the movie “Super Size Me” came out and highlighted the absurdity of the enormous portions.)
July 15th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
I believe that any government action no matter how minor that attempts to influence behavior is a violation of personal liberty.
Libertarians call this attitude “being principled,” but I call it “pretending that political issues are simple by only looking at one aspect of every issue out there, refusing to acknowledge that issues are complex and might require actual thinking to weigh costs and benefits, and refusing to think about what the actual consequences of their suggestions are.”
July 15th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
@55 – Agreed. If we cannot get rid of government, then Mr. Libertarian should agree that “violations” (or what some call “policy”) come in degrees of influence on one’s liberty. Wiretap my home? Large violation with controversial policy outcomes. Provide me with information so I can better chose what to eat? Small violation with positive policy outcomes.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
I also live in NYC. I have a weakness for Taco Bell, and given that there’s one a few blocks away from me, I used to swing by every two weeks or so. But since the calorie information was implemented, staring at those cringe inducing 800 calorie bombs quickly cured me of this habit. This, along with the general prevalence of this information, has led to a significant change in my eating habits, and I have as a result lost weight naturally. I in fact don’t even eat out in general as much as I used to, because I won’t know what the hell I’m getting into at a non-chain restaurant, and as someone with a slow metabolism this has been beneficial.
As far as the practicality goes of requiring mom and pop restaurants to post information, I agree with the general notion that it’s relatively easy to post estimates. BUT, a good number of places I like around the city are run by people who marginally speak English and look fairly shaky as far as stuff like basic health inspections go. This would be a fairly large obstacle, particularly with street carts and literal hole-in-the-wall operations that could hurt people working on essentially subsistence levels. Nevertheless, chain restaurant caloric information nationwide shouldn’t even be an argument. We regulate alcohol and tobacco fairly stringently, and those arguably do a lot less damage than the comically unhealthy diets many Americans live on.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Perhaps the government should order the Yglesias blog to post warnings regarding the problems caused by out-of-control Safety Nazis and noodle-brained economics in order to protect the simple minded. Anyone that’s too dumb to stay thin without mandatory help from government Safety Nazis is too dumb to be allowed to vote. Or be a fireman.
Wouldn’t it be more efficient to simply implant electrodes under the skin of each citizen monitored by a Gestapo agent, I mean monitored remotely by a government dietician who could simply zap you [hard] when you eat the wrong thing or too much? Only a silly libertarian would object to that.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:39 am
It seems the libertarians want the “right” to stop their ears and close their eyes and chant “La-la-la I can’t hear you.’
July 16th, 2009 at 1:11 am
The idea that you can add together the ingredients and calculate the calories is the stupidest thing that I’ve ever heard. Cooking is a CHEMICAL PROCESS. The heat and combination of elements results in an alteration of the basic substance of the food, which can either decrease or increase the amount of calories in the finished project.
Jesus Christ, didn’t any of you people take a damn science class?
In order to have any kind of accuracy, you’re going to have to have representative samples of recipes sent in to labs. Score for big business. Sorry, mom and pop.
July 16th, 2009 at 9:03 am
I would like to point out that it would be important for everyone to understand that these calorie calculations are going to be based on the the menu spec of the dish, not what you are actually served. So, they could vary a great deal.
Say a restaurant gets in a case of pin-bone out trout from their supplier. 5-7 oz average, the case says. So, the average fillet is 6 oz. Since trout fillets are not extruded out a machine, the sizes within the case could vary by an ounce or more each. Sure, the operator is costing his or her menu on a 6 oz average piece of fish, but as far as calories go, it’s a different ball game.
Say the fish gets covered with a chunky tomato sauce. The spec on that, used for costing, is one scoop from a 2 oz ladle. Is that a heaping scoop? is it level? Is the bain marie full of sauce stirred every time a scoop is taken out so the olive oil in it is equally distributed?
When the regular line guy is cooking, how much butter does he put in the pan? How about the lunch cook? Or when the owner comes back and cooks during Monday night service when it’s slow and she’s trying to save on labor? Where does the responsibility for the freshly grated cheese fall? Just tell me when to stop, sir.
Independent restaurants would have a very hard time giving accurate calorie counts. National chains have some of the work done for them by the manufacturers. A 4/1 gallon case of Ken’s Balsamic dressing has X number of calories in it, no problem. But when the prep cook in the back makes his dressing in the big stainless steel bowl, adding oil and whisking all the while, it’s hard to know how much oil there is to the vinegar. It’s not going to be the same every single time.
And the flip side of this is of course the legal ramifications. Our local news periodically busts sushi restaurants for serving fish A in place of more expensive fish B. Shocking! Details tonight a 5, 6 and 11! Just running the calorie numbers on your I Phone might give you an idea of where a dish is on the calorie scale, but it’s not going to be the take-it- to-the-bank type number people would want.
July 16th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Your assumption that the difference in calories consumed and calories expended is sufficient to bring about weightloss belies the fact that forcing restaurants to label calories is at best a useless polic approach. It isn’t how many calories you eat, but what kind of calories you eat that determines weightloss.
A better approach than forcing chain restaurants to label calories, though it would be convenient, would be to stop subsidizing industries that make Americans fat. Stop subsidizing sugar and grain manufacturers. Cheap grain = cheap sugar = cheap junk food.
That the government operates on worthless dogma like the Food Pyramid and forces policies on free actors shows the problem of intervening where information isn’t even close to perfect. You’re assuming they know what they’re doing. You’re essentially taking dietary advice from Ted Kennedy.
July 16th, 2009 at 10:11 am
but it’s not going to be the take-it- to-the-bank type number people would want.
Obviously even in chains, the food is prepared by humans, and will come in uneven sizes and so forth, so actual portions and calorie counts are going to vary somewhat.
But I’m not sure where you get the idea that we need a “take-it-to-the-bank” number here. An in-the-ballpark figure is all that’s required. Just a point of reference, enough to see that, say, the “healthy” salad actually has twice the calories of the chicken sandwich, or that adding an appetizer and a milkshake might not be such a good idea today.
July 16th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Re #60: The effect of cooking can be estimated based on the type of cooking.
I suggest a safe harbor provision where any restaurant which makes a good-faith attempt to estimate the calorie content of a dish (even something as simple as putting the ingredient list and cooking methods into an automated calculator), if a health department inspector discovers that the estimate is inaccurate, should face no penalty other than having to update their menus with more accurate results. Actual penalties should be reserved for deliberate misrepresentation, which I hope would be rare.
Pinpoint accuracy isn’t necessary anyway. Even a count that’s only accurate to within 10% is a hell of a lot better than no information at all when two salads on the same menu differ by a factor of two.
#27 and #62 seem to have bought into some kind of pseudo-nutritional quackery, possibly Atkins or something similar. This raises the point that whoever oversees nutritional information will have to screen out pseudoscience and base their standards on evidence.
July 16th, 2009 at 10:57 am
The idea that you can add together the ingredients and calculate the calories is the stupidest thing that I’ve ever heard. Cooking is a CHEMICAL PROCESS. The heat and combination of elements results in an alteration of the basic substance of the food, which can either decrease or increase the amount of calories in the finished project.
That’s silly. The cooking process is important when looking at delicate vitamins and micronutrients, but most foods just don’t change their calorie count much during cooking. Are there more or fewer calories in a pound of spaghetti before and after cooking? Except for some negligible starch lost to the water, it’s pretty much unchanged.
To a good approximation, all that goes on in cooking is changing water levels — which doesn’t affect calories — and, depending on the food and how it’s cooked, changes in fat content. The latter obviously needs to be accounted for, but you can deal with it with extra entries in your database (”lean ground beef, grilled, raw weight”; “russet potatoes, french fried”), or other approximations (assume that sauteed food picks up X% of the oil it’s cooked in, say).
The rest of what’s going on are things like structural changes to proteins, which sometimes make them easier to digest, but don’t really change their calorie count (and again, it’s easy to have “X, cooked” entries in the database). Even foods that undergo more complex browning processes and so forth don’t change much – a starch or a sugar breaks down into another kind of sugar. But so what? Carbohydrates basically all have the same calories/gram, and the total mass doesn’t change much in these reactions. Besides, these sorts of intensive reactions are usually on a pretty small scale, all things considered. (If they’re really important, you can add an extra item in your database: “sweet potatoes, slow baked”, but it’s probably not going to make much difference.)
And except for some minimal accounting for where the fat goes, it doesn’t really matter how foods are combined, or when. Putting a sauce on the baked sweet potato? Just add the calories of the sauce in. Baking it IN a sauce? Pretty much the same.
The end result isn’t going to be dead-on accurate, obviously, but it’s more than good enough. We could hold chains to a higher standard, maybe, but I’d be perfectly happy with these sort of in-the-ballpark estimates for small establishments. It’s certainly a good deal better than nothing.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Chains tend to have commmoditized their offerings in such a way as to strictly manage both portion size and the amounts of ingredients used per batch. This allows reasonable estimates of basic nutritional info per portion. (What would horrify most anal-retentive calorie counters is that even this information is based on an aggregation of a series of potentially arguable estimates that may or may not be accurate, so one should never rely on this information as if it were anything other than that. The vast majority of people are clueless about this.)
This is not necessarily the case with smaller enterprises, and thus applying these disclosure rules on a mandatory basis to them is unfeasible.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
The “menu” at my favorite local restaurant is written, by hand, by the waitstaff on the table while they explain the dishes to you. The day that they have to write calorie counts next to each dish is the day I start to care about the Second Amendment.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
The nutrition information is easy. You spend $40 for a copy of MasterCook or any number of other programs, type in your recipe, and the software does the calculations based on already loaded nutrition info, which can be easily updated for unique ingredients. If this is too difficult for Mom & Pop, they hire a neighborhood kid to do it. It wouldn’t take more than 5 minutes per recipe to calculate calories. This is not difficult folks.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Chains tend to have commmoditized their offerings in such a way as to strictly manage both portion size and the amounts of ingredients used per batch. This allows reasonable estimates of basic nutritional info per portion.
Line cooks at chains don’t use beam balances to measure the stuff they throw in the pan any more than local restaurants do. Nor are their fish fillets necessarily any more uniform in size. In fact, cooks cook pretty much the same way in both types of places.
Yes, the calorie information is based on a standard recipe, and there will be a lot of variation in individual finished dishes that make this only a rough estimate. But the estimate isn’t necessarily any better for chains.
And so far no one has bothered to explain how a 10% or 20% variation in the actual final calorie count is somehow supposed to be worse than having no count at all.
The point isn’t to allow someone to determine whether the fish has exactly 5 calories less than the chicken. The point is to make it easy to see that the “salad” has about 600 more than both, or that the milkshake has 900, period.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Can someone explain to me how requiring this labeling from all restaurants is, on a conceptual level, substantively different from requiring that women wait 24 hours before having an abortion and/or having to see an ultrasound of their fetus? It would appear as thought this logic is not self-limiting (cf. The Road to Serfdom).
July 16th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Can someone explain to me how requiring this labeling from all restaurants is, on a conceptual level, substantively different from requiring that women wait 24 hours before having an abortion and/or having to see an ultrasound of their fetus?
Presumably such women already know that their fetus is alive. A better comparison on that side would be doctors having to honestly present the potential complications and risks of an abortion procedure to the woman (which they, uh, already do); a better comparison on the other side would be making people look at pictures of grotesquely obese people before ordering a sandwich, or having to plan 24 hours in advance before being allowed to order an ice cream.
July 16th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Yeah, I think we can consider the “printing calorie counts in large letters is indistinguishable from bullying women about abortion” trope to be dealt with. Next?
July 16th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Denny’s and I believe IHOP already market “Heart Smart” and other options that are lower in sodium, cholesterol, and so on in addition to classic favorites like ‘moon over my hammy’ and “Grand Slam” meals. Big chains already know what the nutrition information is because they cost out all their menu items beforehand.
As for the libertarian thing, I should think that for a libertarian ideologue it would be incumbent upon them to not only know what they were eating but to celebrate their freedom by not caring about it, much as conservatives do when they make fun of liberals as lettuce eaters and vegans. Imagine the proud bravado as you tell people your Texas Nachos not only has all the carbs of a pound of fried potatoes, but also the bacon and sour cream any free man would slather himself in were he truly free and topped by the blessed freedom of Ranch dressing and melted cheese. Enough to feed Darfur for a week.
July 16th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
@charlequin
I think the best analogue, given your penchant for literalness, would be to show pregnant women seeking abortions hundreds of pictures of discarded and maimed fetuses. Somehow I think this would offend your sensibilities, as I think it should. Nevertheless, it raises the point that, in both of these situations, one has the state intervening in a private transactional relationship. The fact that progressives are more easily seduced by one type of paternalism rather than the other is a question for the idiot commentors on this site to deal with, not the libertarians who oppose governmental infantilization of human beings in whatever form it should take.
July 16th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
@John – Nice try, but here how it would be the same: if the state mandated that women were given information from doctors explaining abortion as a doctor would explain it, just as calories are described on your receipt. Emotionless, as doctors shouldn’t be in the business of moral evangelizing. In both situations, the “consumer” of a service is getting the facts and can make a more informed decision. That is good!
Progressives are not “seduced” by the idea of showing maimed fetuses because the practice is actively using emotion to prevent a rational decision. Look, everything agrees abortion is bad. Taking that as a given, the paternalism toward women making a choice about abortion assumes they don’t really know the moral quandary they face. That’s dumb and insulting.
AGAIN: policy is about degrees. A huge problem — like the heart disease epidemic for instance — may support what you believe to be an intrusion. A smaller problem — like believing women don’t “really consider” their abortion absent grotesque pictures — seem disproportionate and poorly-suited to the policy outcome, which is getting fewer abortions.
If women were given objective information, say, from doctors rather than policy makers, it’s be A-OK. Here, information is objective and coming from doctors so it’s fine and not-at-all paternalistic.
July 16th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
one has the state intervening in a private transactional relationship
This also is incorrect. The state is always involved in private transactions. It’s what the state does! Creates money, creates expectations that markets are safe, creates predictability in some of the easily-misrepresented products, it creates the legal system for if things go awry, it subsidizes a wide variety of things that go into the products and allows companies to incorporate within its legal system. It is everywhere.
Now taking that as a fact of life that is unlikely to be changed, using the state to unobtrusively influence some behavior toward healthful outcomes seems small compared to all the other things the state is doing within your so-called “private transaction.”
July 17th, 2009 at 10:20 am
None of this is really dissuading me from my working definition of a libertarian: An individual incapable of telling the difference between a mud puddle and Lake Michigan because, one, they’re unwilling to recognize that useful distinctions can be made on any basis except whether or not the government is involved in some way, and two, they’re unwilling to recognize the concept of distinguishing between items on a continuous scale at ALL.
Or, to use an old joke:
What normal people hear: “Requiring that menus display calorie information clearly is not tantamount to the government requiring that doctors show pregnant women pictures of fetuses, because the former is useful, factual information necessary for consumers to make informed decisions on a critical public health threat, while the latter is blatant, irrational, emotional bullying.”
What a libertarian hears: “Blah blah blah blah GOVERNMENT blah blah blah blah.”
July 17th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
I don’t identify as a libertarian, myself. I consider myself a liberal. It seems to me that libertarians are more liberal than the Democratic Party on many, if not most, issues (foreign policy, drugs, civil rights, criminal justice, freedom of speech). Treating libertarians as if they’re all the same, however, smacks of bigotry. For instance, I saw a round table discussion where Matt Welch told his fellow libertarians that France did a fantastic job providing universal health care.
Anyway, back on topic. Really, the gist of this argument is that people who serve food have the obligation of providing people who buy food with information that the people who buy food can find on their own. This means that if I put all my savings, go into debt, and work 12 to 16 hour days to open a small restaurant, I shouldn’t be allowed to sell my food to people unless I, on top of everything else, provide them with caloric information that they can easily find for themselves.
It seems this implies that the consumers of food are too stupid and/or lazy to find this information and, therefore, require the government force small-business owners to do their research for them. As a liberal, I don’t understand this.
July 17th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Actually, it’s pretty much exactly the same.
Are you seriously arguing that what’s going on here isn’t bullying?
Since at chain restaurants all this information is already available, the complaint the paternalists have is that people don’t apparently look at it in great enough numbers to produce the behavioral change that the paternalists demand.
Therefore, the paternalists want to up the ante by making the information more prominent, in order to beat people over the head with the information they’re “failing” to pay enough attention to.
And when that doesn’t produce the desired behavioral change and people continue to eat high-calorie food, next they’ll want to force restaurants to put up pictures of morbidly obese people, or of the corpses of people who recently died of diabetes or what have you, the way NYC now wants to do with cigarettes.
None of this is really dissuading me from my working definition of a libertarian
Here’s my working definition of a libertarian, in the context of this discussion:
If someone wants to sell me a sandwich and I want to buy it, a libertarian is someone who doesn’t see why this should be considered a criminal act if there’s no calorie sign posted. A libertarian doesn’t want to hear about your policy goal, he just wants to know what’s criminal in the act itself. And as a libertarian, I just don’t see anything criminal in the action of selling me a sandwich that I actively want to buy even though you don’t have a calorie count posted in the right size font.
July 17th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
The answer to that issue is to stop making you (& me & everyone else) pay for everyone else’s health care — not to continually increase restrictions all around based on the premise that since everybody’s paying for it, everybody gets a say in how everyone else lives their lives.
July 18th, 2009 at 1:30 am
Are you seriously arguing that what’s going on here isn’t bullying?
Yes.
Did you even read the original post? Or any of the comments? Neil Sinhababu has a good follow-up at his blog too.
The point is that people genuinely don’t want to be eating as much as they do. Especially in our ‘while-sleeping’ desires, but even our ‘in-the-moment’ desires are thwarted all the time when we order a “salad” because we’re trying to order what seems like the healthiest thing on the menu, but it turns out it’s really 500 calories more than the sandwich we might actually have preferred anyway. There’s a major market failure there.
And dismissing that as unimportant because that nutrition information is already available–on the website, or a poster on the bathroom door, or in some brochures in the bottom drawer back in the manager’s office– is just pathetically out of touch with actual human psychology, and, for that matter, basic economics. (The term you should be looking up is ‘information cost’.)
So, no, it absolutely isn’t bullying. If you can’t see the difference, I suggest you go talk to some real people, ones without libertarian blinders on, and then look again.
July 18th, 2009 at 1:34 am
The answer to that issue is to stop making you (& me & everyone else) pay for everyone else’s health care — not to continually increase restrictions all around based on the premise that since everybody’s paying for it, everybody gets a say in how everyone else lives their lives.
Ah. I see. Of course, the real solution is obviously to raze industrial civilization to the ground and go live in caves. Those of us who survive will be constantly hungry, short-lived, and ridden with parasites, but at least we’ll be “free(tm)”!
July 18th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Ah. I see. Of course, the real solution is obviously to raze industrial civilization to the ground and go live in caves. Those of us who survive will be constantly hungry, short-lived, and ridden with parasites, but at least we’ll be “free(tm)”!
This is the equivalent of a conservative equating homosexuality with child molestation. It’s a terrible way to argue a point because it’s fundamentally dishonest.
July 18th, 2009 at 3:53 am
Wow, you’re really confident about your understanding of human psychology. You must have a lot of professional experience in the field? Behavior analysis and modification? What, exactly? (I only ask because you’re being rather arrogant.)
July 18th, 2009 at 8:55 am
The point is that people genuinely don’t want to be eating as much as they do.
Oh, I see. An argument from false consciousness.
I automatically reject all arguments relying on the concept of false consciousness out of hand, so you can go pound sand on that one.
The Sinhababu distinction is meaningless. People have contradictory desires. When they devote resources to gratifying ONE of those contradictory desires, that proves that was their real desire. So if you CLAIM that you want to lose weight, but then actually buy and consume fattening food, then your desire to eat fattening food was simply greater than your desire to lose weight. The desire to lose weight wasn’t your “real” desire, and the desire to eat fattening food was not the product of some kind of false consciousness.
More importantly, if I am in the business of selling fattening food and you come in and buy it and eat it, I am absolutely, positively, 100% morally entitled to regard that as your real desire without limitation or qualification. I am under absolutely no obligation to stop and think to myself, “Gee, does this person really truly want my food, or do they want something else?” That is not a morally reasonable imposition to place upon me, and if I unilaterally assumed it and started refusing to sell you food if I thought you really didn’t want it, you would go berserk. Do your own damn self-hectoring about weight, because worrying about your weight is not my damn problem.
July 18th, 2009 at 10:06 am
The Sinhababu distinction is meaningless. People have contradictory desires. When they devote resources to gratifying ONE of those contradictory desires, that proves that was their real desire.
Prove it.
July 18th, 2009 at 10:11 am
This is the equivalent of a conservative equating homosexuality with child molestation. It’s a terrible way to argue a point because it’s fundamentally dishonest.
It’s perhaps unfair. But hardly dishonest. You may not think that’s the logical conclusion of that philosophy, but it’s certainly as plausible as any other.
Alex was saying, quite literally, that it’s fine with him or her if people get fat, get sick and die young. The really important thing is just that we (collectively) don’t do anything about it.
July 18th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Wow, you’re really confident about your understanding of human psychology. You must have a lot of professional experience in the field? Behavior analysis and modification? What, exactly? (I only ask because you’re being rather arrogant.)
There is, you know, actual research on this stuff. Like the LA research that was the topic of this post. You could also go read something by Dan Ariely or someone and at least gain a healthy skepticism of Fluffy’s econ 101 assumption that what people want and what people do is automatically some kind of identity.
Now, I don’t have anything on hand that actually shows that people don’t feel “bullied” by this kind of information. You could certainly try asking them and see. But I’d be surprised if many did– this is basically a price. Do people feel bullied when prices are put in menus? I feel rather more uncomfortable if they aren’t. (And there seems to be plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that people are indeed quite eager for clues about the fattening potential of what they’re ordering, but reliable information presently isn’t easily available where they need it).
But I might be wrong. Perhaps people really do have long term desires to get fat. That is actually an evidence based claim though: not amenable to econ 101 theorizing about homo economicus.
July 18th, 2009 at 10:39 am
“Now of course you’ll hear a libertarian argument to the effect of, “if people really wanted to know this stuff the market would respond automatically” which I think you’d have to say was naive at best.”
So it’s naive to believe that businesses serve their customers demands and that individuals are responsible for their own , but it’s … wise… to believe that the magic wand of legislation waved by the iron fist of the state can make people lose weight?
Well, it worked in the Soviet Union and China, and it has worked really well in Zimbabwe lately. If y’all are serious about making people lose weight by government dictate then piffling little measures like menu labeling isn’t the way to go. What we need is a radical transformation of the food system. How about we take all of the farms owned by white people and give them away to non-white people? This is the advanced govt weight loss method pioneered by the Zimbabwe govt. Within 5 years we will no longer have a national obesity problem.
Any collectivist takers?
July 18th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I should clarify that there are at least two complementary claims here about why listing calorie counts would help:
1. When people are trying to order halfway healthy things, but are unable to glean cues about what those are merely from the menu. They look for cues like “chicken” “fish” or “salad”, but those are frequently very misleading.
Or perhaps they’re intending to treat themselves a little, but then aren’t aware that a milkshake can easily be more than 1000 calories, and an “appetizer” the same, which would be a little more than they wanted. (Or, for that matter, that a “healthy smoothie” has almost as many calories as a milkshake.)
2. When people have a long term desire to lose weight, but sometimes forget about it “in the moment”. A calorie count might serve as a reminder about their own long term goals, and ‘nudge’ them on some of those occasions to cut back a little.
Of those, I think only 2 comes anywhere close to ‘bullying’, and then, only when it doesn’t overlap with 1 at all, which is unlikely. Even when 2 stands on it’s own, it’s difficult to see how it crosses a line.
July 18th, 2009 at 10:57 am
“The point is that people genuinely don’t want to be eating as much as they do. “
They also want to be rich and beautiful, and they want to be skinny, and they don’t want to work for these things and instead want the government or someone else to make it happen for them. If people are this lazy, ignorant, and stupid, then they should be fat.
Especially in our ‘while-sleeping’ desires, but even our ‘in-the-moment’ desires are thwarted all the time when we order a “salad” because we’re trying to order what seems like the healthiest thing on the menu, but it turns out it’s really 500 calories more than the sandwich we might actually have preferred anyway. There’s a major market failure there.
No, that is not a market failure. People want salty fatty greasy fattening food that tastes good and is cheap as possible. People do not want food that will make them lose weight. People who are serious about losing weight don’t eat out. They prepare the food themselves. People who are lazy and don’t really care to work to have healthy food eat out. The market works.
“And dismissing that as unimportant because that nutrition information is already available–on the website, or a poster on the bathroom door, or in some brochures in the bottom drawer back in the manager’s office– is just pathetically out of touch with actual human psychology, and, for that matter, basic economics. (The term you should be looking up is ‘information cost’.)”
It’s unimportant because technically speaking EVERYONE CAN THINK FOR THEMSELVES. I’m not out of touch with human psychology – people wish to be lazy, fat, and stupid. The market serves their desires.
So, no, it absolutely isn’t bullying. If you can’t see the difference, I suggest you go talk to some real people, ones without libertarian blinders on, and then look again.
libertarians don’t have blinders on. They actually have the blinders and scales removed. You are being blind to your own individual capacity and responsibility, and instead wish to bully others into working for you for free to do your thinking for you.
Of course, you don’t view it as bullying, since you aren’t the one with the business on the line that will go under with these new burdens. You aren’t the one looking at losing the money and hard work you’ve invested. Nope, you are willing to destroy the lives, businesses, and work of other people because you and too many other people are too damn lazy to think or cook for yourselves.
July 18th, 2009 at 10:59 am
So it’s naive to believe that businesses serve their customers demands and that individuals are responsible for their own , but it’s … wise… to believe that the magic wand of legislation waved by the iron fist of the state can make people lose weight?
No. But it’s wise to look carefully at each individual situation on it’s own merits and decide what might be the best approach.
It’s unwise to make broad generalizations about “invisible hands” and “iron fists” and then attempt to divide the policy world up with simpleminded, one-size-fits-all, bright-line rules.
July 18th, 2009 at 11:06 am
No, that is not a market failure. People want salty fatty greasy fattening food that tastes good and is cheap as possible. People do not want food that will make them lose weight.
Riiight. Which is why there’s no market for “health food” and “diet food”, and nobody ever tries to look for the healthiest thing on the menu, only the fattest and greasiest. And models are all 500 pounds, because that is so sexy and desirable.
Seriously? You don’t think maybe this behavior might be easier to explain by noting that the vague clues people use to look for healthy food don’t work so well? Especially when portions are huge?
People who are serious about losing weight don’t eat out.
Oh. Right. They should all be hermits. And we shouldn’t lift a finger to help them (ourselves!), because they aren’t “serious”, so they should be punished.
July 18th, 2009 at 11:12 am
None of this is really dissuading me from my working definition of a libertarian: An individual incapable of telling the difference between a mud puddle and Lake Michigan because, one, they’re unwilling to recognize that useful distinctions can be made on any basis except whether or not the government is involved in some way, and two, they’re unwilling to recognize the concept of distinguishing between items on a continuous scale at ALL.
No, we really can tell the difference between a mud puddle and Lake Michigan. What you fail to realize is that the difference between having the government try to drown me in a mud puddle instead of Lake Michigan doesn’t convince me that being drowned in a mud puddle is something to be desired.
Libertarians call this attitude “being principled,” but I call it “pretending that political issues are simple by only looking at one aspect of every issue out there, refusing to acknowledge that issues are complex and might require actual thinking to weigh costs and benefits, and refusing to think about what the actual consequences of their suggestions are.”
Libertarians are not the ones who are inherently ignorant.
Let’s consider the ramifications of mandatory menu labeling:
Small businesses and independents go out of business. (those who don’t consider this likely obviously have no idea how razor thin the profit margins in the restaurant business are or how competitive the market is).
The remaining businesses pass on higher costs to consumers.
Consumers get exposed to a constant barrage of information which they then will ignore. If nutritional information causes people to think about their food choices and limit their calorie intake…why do they continue to consume the vast quantities of fattening stuff from supermarkets?
New businesses, such as those which might arise to serve the growing demand in healthy food, will be discouraged from opening, while those fast food and other chains remain in business.
Some sort of new government agency and bureaucracy will have to arise to enforce these regulations, adding more costs with no benefit.
Yet more precedent will be set for govt control of food. Perhaps next the govt will have to set the number of calories permitted in a hamburger?
The real problem, people shoving too much food in their mouths and not exercising enough, will not be addressed.
July 18th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Of course, you don’t view it as bullying, since you aren’t the one with the business on the line that will go under with these new burdens. You aren’t the one looking at losing the money and hard work you’ve invested. Nope, you are willing to destroy the lives, businesses, and work of other people because you and too many other people are too damn lazy to think or cook for yourselves.
1. You’re the first one so far to apply the bullying claim to businesses. The original point of that was that we were supposedly bullying customers by making them feel guilty about what they were eating.
AFAICT, even some of the more libertarian-leaning commentors were receptive to the idea that labeling regulations for businesses could at least in principle be good ideas.
2. How in the world would taking ten minutes to do some calorie calculations put an apocalyptic burden on restaurants? (All of them?) I guess we should obviously rescind health code laws too, just imagine the damage those are doing!
3. You don’t know anything about me.
July 18th, 2009 at 11:18 am
The real problem, people shoving too much food in their mouths and not exercising enough, will not be addressed.
Oh? And how would you address it?
July 18th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Incidentally, this:
New businesses, such as those which might arise to serve the growing demand in healthy food, will be discouraged from opening, while those fast food and other chains remain in business.
…Is just weird. If there’s a demand for healthy food, how are healthier restaurants discouraged, and unhealthy ones aided by a labeling requirement that makes it clearer to consumers which is which?
July 18th, 2009 at 11:24 am
It’s unwise to make broad generalizations about “invisible hands” and “iron fists” and then attempt to divide the policy world up with simpleminded, one-size-fits-all, bright-line rules.
Isn’t that exactly what the menu labeling law does?
Riiight. Which is why there’s no market for “health food” and “diet food”, and nobody ever tries to look for the healthiest thing on the menu, only the fattest and greasiest. And models are all 500 pounds, because that is so sexy and desirable.
If you examine “health” food and “diet” food you’ll find that the former isn’t healthy and the latter isn’t a diet. People don’t want to eat right, they want to perceive themselves as eating right. All they really want is a label and the illusion that they are doing okay.
>>Seriously? You don’t think maybe this behavior might be easier to explain by noting that the vague clues people use to look for healthy food don’t work so well? Especially when portions are huge?
If people concerned about their weight and health would bother to read a book or ten about the issues that allegedly concern them they wouldn’t have to rely on the vague clues provided by commercial establishments or by government orders.
>>Oh. Right. They should all be hermits. And we shouldn’t lift a finger to help them (ourselves!), because they aren’t “serious”, so they should be punished.
I am serious about my health. I don’t eat out. If I do I’m very careful about what I order and what I eat. The vast majority of places won’t ever get my business.
Yes, those who eat fast food, chain food, full portions of restaurant fare, etc without thinking for themselves deserve to be punished by the consequences of their actions. If you are so ignorant, stupid, and or lazy as to think that eating a salad with a cup of fatty dressing is healthy eating – then yes you should be punished with the exact amount of weight gain that you will have from eating that exact amount of food. The weight gain, that punishment, is the message your own body is giving to you to eat less.
Of course, rather than listening to the not-so-subtle message of being 20 or 200 pounds overweight, government dictated menu labeling requirements will do the trick!
July 18th, 2009 at 11:33 am
If you examine “health” food and “diet” food you’ll find that the former isn’t healthy and the latter isn’t a diet.
Yet these products CLAIM to be healthy in big colorful, convincing letters on the front of the box. Of course, the falsity of these claims is clearly visible. In a little black and white table of tiny little numbers on the back of the box, that nobody really understands anyway.
But you don’t think maybe the relative strength and clarity of those advertisements is a factor here? No doubt in your mind? People already know everything, it’s really just that they want to be fat?
July 18th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Isn’t that exactly what the menu labeling law does?
Uhhh. No? Not unless we’re going to just slap “500 calories” on everything no matter what it is.
Even then, it’s only analogous. It’d still at least be looking at one specific area of policy, not pre-forming conclusions based on rigid slogans like “government bad”, “slippery slope”, “if people buy it, they must want it”, “freedom!”, etc.
July 18th, 2009 at 11:38 am
1. You’re the first one so far to apply the bullying claim to businesses. The original point of that was that we were supposedly bullying customers by making them feel guilty about what they were eating.
Consumers would be the secondary group bullied, and to a much lesser extent. Most likely they would ignore this information like they do with everything else.
AFAICT, even some of the more libertarian-leaning commentors were receptive to the idea that labeling regulations for businesses could at least in principle be good ideas.
There is a tremendous difference between libertarian leaning people and libertarians.
2. How in the world would taking ten minutes to do some calorie calculations put an apocalyptic burden on restaurants? (All of them?)
You’ve never owned or operated a restaurant, have you? Have you ever attempted to comply with government regulations for a business? It won’t take ten minutes. The cost will be likely be hundreds of dollars per dish if scientific testing is required. If you have a different menu every day or week it’s not possible. Even if guesstimating via calorie calculators were permitted at ten minutes per dish a menu with 30 dishes might have an extra 300 minutes, or 5 hours of work. That’s a good chunk of time – and you won’t be able to pay dishwasher wages to someone who can accurately access and calculate calories.
I guess we should obviously rescind health code laws too, just imagine the damage those are doing!
I’d favor that. Health code permits unsafe practices and prohibits safe practices in the name of safety.
3. You don’t know anything about me.
True, but if you are a supporter of this sort of program, I know that you are not a responsible person.
July 18th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Yet these products CLAIM to be healthy in big colorful, convincing letters on the front of the box. Of course, the falsity of these claims is clearly visible. In a little black and white table of tiny little numbers on the back of the box, that nobody really understands anyway.
So…corporations can make misleading claims, as permitted by govt, and these claims are proven to be misleading by the govt required nutritional info, but nobody really understands this, so you want more govt required nutritional info that people won’t really understand?
But you don’t think maybe the relative strength and clarity of those advertisements is a factor here? No doubt in your mind? People already know everything, it’s really just that they want to be fat?
No, people don’t know anything and they don’t want to because they would have to think and read and do math (gasp!). My current menu includes a 450 calorie coffee drink. People order it non-fat, saving 50 calories. I used to have one fat lady customer who kept complaining how she couldn’t lose weight. It never occurred to her that drinking three or four or more of these drinks per day (plus whatever else she was eating and drinking) and her complete lack of exercise might have something to do with her weight problem. Putting a calorie total next to the price isn’t gonna work for people like her. The same type will complain about how they are broke, but they never realize that they are spending upwards of five grand or more a year on fattening dessert coffee drinks, even though the price is plainly marked on the menu.
The solution isn’t more information, as there is already more than enough information available to anyone who looks for it. Nor is it more govt mandates, already plenty of those. No, the solution is for each individual to think and act for themselves.
July 18th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Even then, it’s only analogous. It’d still at least be looking at one specific area of policy, not pre-forming conclusions based on rigid slogans like “government bad”, “slippery slope”, “if people buy it, they must want it”, “freedom!”, etc.
The slogans are not rigid. The principle is. “Do no harm”. This policy is harmful. Forcing costs onto businesses in order to prevent people from engaging in business with them is harmful. If the policy were to actually work, then a great many businesses, such as all of fast food, would go out of business as people would suddenly start to eat right. However, it won’t work because people don’t want to eat right, so it will just add costs with no benefit.
July 18th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
You’ve never owned or operated a restaurant, have you? Have you ever attempted to comply with government regulations for a business? It won’t take ten minutes. The cost will be likely be hundreds of dollars per dish if scientific testing is required. If you have a different menu every day or week it’s not possible. Even if guesstimating via calorie calculators were permitted at ten minutes per dish a menu with 30 dishes might have an extra 300 minutes, or 5 hours of work. That’s a good chunk of time – and you won’t be able to pay dishwasher wages to someone who can accurately access and calculate calories.
Ah. So basically you haven’t been paying attention. Figures.
Putting a calorie total next to the price isn’t gonna work for people like her.
Really? Why do you think not? It sounds like she was basically clueless about the calorie count, and thought “light” meant it didn’t have any. You really don’t think putting the calorie count upfront might have at least made her actually make informed decisions?
(Also: Apparently you already know how many calories your drinks have? How many hours did you spend calculating that?)
July 18th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
The principle is. “Do no harm”…Forcing costs onto businesses in order to prevent people from engaging in business with them is harmful.
This is what’s known as “cost analysis”. It’s sister is “benefit analysis” (see: Iraq War, the.)
Unlike cost-benefit analysis, neither are particularly useful strategies for analyzing policy.
However, it won’t work because people don’t want to eat right, so it will just add costs with no benefit.
This is an utterly unsupported assertion which indeed actually seems to contradict the available evidence. See, well, the original post.
July 18th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
So…corporations can make misleading claims, as permitted by govt, and these claims are proven to be misleading by the govt required nutritional info, but nobody really understands this, so you want more govt required nutritional info that people won’t really understand?
The claims usually aren’t directly contradictory or untruthful, merely misleading. For example, in a consumer’s mind things like “organic”, “no trans-fats”, “high in anti-oxidants” all equal “healthy”.
The actual information is on the back of the package, but the calorie information is obscured by a lot of other noise.
And don’t misunderstand: nutritional labeling has done a lot of good. There are clearly many people who can and do make sense of the more complicated information on the back of packages. There’s no reason not to extend that a little further and try to reach people who are a little confused or not paying attention (and to combat the increasing savvy of food producers cloaking their products in fake auras of healthiness) by putting the most important number right up front. (Especially on restaurant menus, where that information currently isn’t.)
July 19th, 2009 at 3:17 am
Questions about these statistics.
1) According to the US Census Bureau, LA County’s population has increased 3.8% between 2000 and 2008, for an average of +0.45% per year. That comes out to about +42.8k people/year. If we divide the 6,750,000 lbs gained per year (from the Health Assessment Impact) by that, it comes out to ~157 lbs/person. So, if the county’s annual weight gain increase (the 6.75 mil lbs/yr) doesn’t account for the change in population, isn’t 157 lbs not too far off of an average human weight (since this population increase would, I think, be mostly adults moving into the area)? (Note: if population increase does explain much of the annual weight gain, then it might be said that people’s weight is fairly steady; LA County isn’t getting fatter and fatter)
I’ve looked to see what that annual weight gain does actually measure, but I can’t seem to find the info. I must not be googling the correct terms. Anyone else having an luck finding the source data?
—
2) If we ignore the population change, we can use the data in that impact study to get information about people’s eating habits. So, take the +6,750,000 lbs/yr, divide it by 365 days/yr, divide it by 9,862,049 people in LA County, and multiply it by 3500 calories/lb of human weight (again from the impact study). I get +6.56 calorie/person/day. So, the published weight gain seems to say that people eat 6.56 calories per day more than they should. Cutting 25-200 calories would put below their weight-maintaining intake level. So, the report is really just saying, on average, people should diet. I will note that if the annual weight gain doesn’t account for population growth, then this report would say people should diet /regardless of their weight or health/.
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3) The Impact Study gives obesity rates for 5th, 7th, and 9th graders. Obesity was defined using Body Mass Index (let’s ignore for the moment that BMI is a horrible metric that doesn’t work). For children, Obese is defined as having a BMI above the 95th percentile for that age. I’m not quite sure how 23% of kids are in the upper 5%. I guess that means that kids in LA are just really overweight and the rest of the country is much better off?
4) This report doesn’t take into account the distribution in weights and number of visits to fast food restaurants. When you’re mixing underweight-through-obese and never visits-through-eats only fast food people, it’s not clear to me how averaging everyone together affects the results. As an example, if the 20% of the population (per the report) that is obese (BMI of 28, 6′, 200 lbs) are the only chain restaurant customers and are the only ones gaining weight (go with me here), then cutting out 100 calories a day (1 meal per day instead of the 1.2 or so meals the report says they’d need to have to match the given numbers) will make them lose 10.4 lbs/yr, which is ~75% of the 13.78 lbs/yr they’d need to lose to reduce the county’s annual weight gain to zero. Before anyone jumps in and says “Aha! Obese people are more likely to eat at chain restaurants and gain weight, so you’re telling us that this would have twice the reported impact!” let me point out that the figure that 10% of people that would reduce their caloric intake probably (I’m not on a computer where I can read the source journal article right now, so just guessing) includes everyone. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to guess that the people who would reduce choose other meal options are more likely to be those watching their weight. Meaning those that are already health conscious (not obese) or looking to lose weight (already applying a negative to the annual weight gain). For the first group, at least, it’s not clear that they do contribute to the annual weight gain number, or if they do over-intake at restaurants, they don’t compensate by exercising a bit more.
—
In the end, I don’t think hard conclusions can be drawn from the report at hand. It’s not clear what the numbers they use actually measure (and I’m having difficulty finding answers online) and whether treating an “average person” is a correct approach here.
July 19th, 2009 at 3:22 am
Since it may not be clear in my above post, where I say (at the end of #2) that the report would conclude that everyone should diet, regardless of their weight…I mean that the report would conclude that as a result of the “average person” approach that they use.
July 19th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
I want mommy to change my diaper and wipe my ass for me for the rest of my life!
July 20th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Living in a free society requires some responsibility on the part of individuals. If an individual wants the nutritional information and the restaurant doesn’t provide it, the individual needs to decide to take the risk of getting an extra 200 calories and eat there or to go over to McD’s and get something the individual can see the info. If one ends up eating at the place that doesn’t provide the info and gets fat, one took the risk and need to take responsibility for his actions.
July 20th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Living in a free society requires some responsibility on the part of individuals. If an individual wants information on what’s in their meat and the factory doesn’t provide it, the individual needs to decide to take the risk of eating diseased meat. If one ends up eating at the place that doesn’t provide the info and gets sick, one took the risk and need to take responsibility for his actions.
July 20th, 2009 at 10:55 am
More to the point though, taking responsibility for our actions, and making it easier for people to make the right decisions are not by any means mutually exclusive propositions.
And yet libertarian leaning types seem ever eager to conflate them…
July 21st, 2009 at 3:52 pm
If the nutritional information was available for a fee. What would you pay?
July 21st, 2009 at 6:41 pm
[i]Ah. So basically you haven’t been paying attention. Figures[/i]
Nice way to avoid addressing your lust for killing businesses.
Really? Why do you think not?
She is a moron. Anyone who drinks 1500-2000+ calories of junk food per day while on a diet and is unable to connect the former with the failure of the latter is a moron.
It sounds like she was basically clueless about the calorie count, and thought “light” meant it didn’t have any.
She was clueless, but the word “light” never entered into a description of a drink with five types of sugar.
You really don’t think putting the calorie count upfront might have at least made her actually make informed decisions?
No. One can’t help one who won’t help themselves. The secrets of weight loss are no secret.
(Also: Apparently you already know how many calories your drinks have? How many hours did you spend calculating that?)
I calculated one, takes about 5 minutes, however for compliance with legislation I’d have to submit multiple samples to a lab at a cost of hundreds or thousands of dollars per drink. But hey, what’s another business killed off by well intentioned legislation? Just another stepping stone to hell.
This is an utterly unsupported assertion which indeed actually seems to contradict the available evidence. See, well, the original post.
Ah yes, the original post that claims calorie counts will make LA lose weight, because cities are actually human beings with a waist line.
There’s no reason not to extend that a little further
Of course not. Once you’ve accepted that personal responsibility is a thing of the past and that your health, wealth, and well being are the responsibility of the government and other people, there is no longer any reason to not extend any govt policy a little further.
July 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm
More to the point though, taking responsibility for our actions, and making it easier for people to make the right decisions are not by any means mutually exclusive propositions.
And yet libertarian leaning types seem ever eager to conflate them…
Sir, if you have the capacity for logical and reflective thought and stand back and reexamine your statement you’ll see that they are mutually exclusive.