Liquid Poundage

I have appreciated the NYC Health Department's effort to inform consumers of the caloric content of their food. I am an advocate of the program. The rule is a restaurant with 15 or more nationwide locations must post calorie information for all items on the menu. Now maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle goes far beyond calorie counting (an entirely separate post) but I think the program has forced vendors to re-evaluate their products as consumers are confronted with jaw-dropping, 4-figure calorie numbers in their favorite pastry or latte.


Pre-Calorie law, someone in my office found out that Chipotle burritos can contain 1,000 calories or more. People were flabbergasted. I was flabbergasted that they were flabbergasted. How could they not realize that giant tortillas, meat, cheese, sour cream, guacamole, beans, and rice were not low calorie? At this moment, I realized a lot of misconceptions exist about food, no matter your background.


I first encountered a new calorie-law menu when I came back from London for Thanksgiving. As someone overly obsessed with calorie counting, I would often seek out this information via company websites. Still, looking through the food case at Starbucks and seeing no calorie counts below 400 is a pretty eye-opening experience.


This week NYC started a new campaign specifically targeting soft drinks (http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/galleries/dont_drink_yourself_fat_new_nyc_health_dept_ads/dont_drink_yourself_fat_new_nyc_health_dept_ads.html#ph0). I applaud the effort to raise awareness about soft drinks. They are absolutely delicious but have zero nutritional value whatsoever. Despite this, people continue to drink them in mass.


If I were in charge, I'd add salad dressing to this campaign. Perhaps most readers are aware that salad dressing is full of calories but I feel the general public is blissfully ignorant as they lather ranch or french dressing all over their salads. The reason for this is that if they knew the salad they are chomping down has the same caloric content as a Whopper, they would opt for the Whopper. I would. What I am not so eloquently trying to say is while I appreciate raising awareness about sugary beverages what might be more effective would be to raise awareness about foods that come with a healthy connotation.