Comments on: Doubts on calorie counts

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:29:59 +0000

Well, Hardee’s revels in the fact that their food is bad for you. It’s an implied part of their advertising campaign. I think that if they posted their calorie information, they would use calorie counts as a selling point (the Double Bacon Cheese Mayo Thickburger, now with 2000 calories!)

By: Jacob Grier

Jacob Grier — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 03:59:53 +0000

RD,

Note that the information already is generally available. Consumers who want the nutritional info for fast food can usually find it: online, in papers available at the restaurant, on tray liners, etc. It’s not a secret. Fast food restaurants have been voluntarily providing it for some time. Laws such as the one in NYC don’t merely require that the info be provided. They mandate that it be posted in as large a type as the prices on the valuable real estate of menu boards.

So no, this isn’t about providing the information. It’s about imposing on restaurants and consumers alike a more prominent display of it than they would otherwise produce, without any clearly demonstrated benefits or demand for the imposition.

By: RumorsDaily

RumorsDaily — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 03:42:34 +0000

This is merely about providing easy to access information about food products in places where people can easily access them. Just because most people don’t care doesn’t mean the information is inappropriate or not worthwhile. I doubt most people look at the sides of food boxes to read the information listed there either, but it allows those consumer who are interested to quickly and easily gauge whether it’s a product they might want to buy. Do you oppose mandatory nutrition information on regular supermarket food products as well?

My libertarian credentials may be waning, but I fully support this. The more information we have, the better decision we make, and the better the market will conform to our desires and provide us the products that we want.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:41:30 +0000

I won’t really get into the issue here again, except to say that I see a lot of obvious problems with the way conclusions are drawn from these observations. We’ve been over the reasons why.

What I did want to say is that this very morning I avoided breakfast at Burger King (at the airport) as a direct result of posted calorie information. It was a useful reminder of the previous decision-making I’ve done on the issue of fast food. At very least there’s some direct anecdotal evidence that posting nutrition information CAN be useful.

Notice also that it led to me AVOIDING the restaurant, which I think undercuts the point made by Sullum. “If people are clamoring for impossible-to-ignore calorie counts, why don’t more restaurants voluntarily provide them as a way of attracting customers?” Because it will lead to fewer customers if their food choices aren’t also healthy.