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Big Brother picking at our plates

ANOTHER VIEW

FTP | Friday, Apr 4 2008 9:13 PM

Last Updated: Friday, Apr 4 2008 9:18 PM

Everybody knows one that friend or co-worker who sanctimoniously surveys your plate before squawking, "Do you know how many calories are in that?" Now it's a brother -- Big Brother, in the form a California legislator who has topped them all, calling for in-your-face calorie counts on the restaurant menus.

Nagging may soon be part of the Golden State's health code. Though a recent Bakersfield Californian editorial supports this push for public-health pestering, the evidence does not. In fact, menu mandates are not only annoying, but ineffective and misplaced.

Americans consume barely one-fifth of our calories at restaurants. By selectively targeting only a handful of restaurants, the menu labeling bill narrowly focuses on an even smaller piece of the calorie pie about 3 percent of the average American's diet. That's a mere 60 calories per day.

The biggest chunk of the food we eat still comes from meals prepared at home. And nutrition labels haven't curbed our eating habits there. A former Food and Drug Administration commissioner even admitted that grocery shoppers "had mandatory nutrition labeling for 10 years, and the (obesity) situation got steadily worse during that time."

The proposed law attempts to force entrées into the same category as mass-produced grocery foods, requiring one blanket calorie count for each item. The mandate opens the door for greedy trial lawyers as soon as one overzealous waiter gets a little too generous with the parmesan. In fact, the Center for Science in the Public Interest -- a group with a long history of frivolous lawsuits -- has already started laying the foundation for a "made-to-order" civil case.

Using information already provided by restaurants' voluntary systems, CSPI investigated the accuracy of generic nutrition facts for individual orders. Not surprisingly, it found that the listed figures varied from plate to plate differences ranging from 16 to 350 calories.

The explanation is simple enough.

A kitchen -- whether it belongs to your mom or a four-star chef -- is not a manufacturing plant. So while the contents of countless TV dinners are indistinguishable, the nutrients in every restaurant order are as unique as the customers requesting them. It's the reason we enjoy dining out in the first place.

In addition to practical and legal setbacks, menu labeling faces a fundamental problem. It misses its main objective -- health. The policy excludes all nutrition information -- except for the calorie tally -- from our immediate consideration on menu boards, perpetuating the myth that "calories are all that counts."

It's not that simple. America's top nutritionists have long insisted that "healthy" diets are not built on a single nutrient or type of food. Instead, our nutrition needs depend on our age, gender, height, medical status, daily schedule, activity level, likes, dislikes, and more. (That's definitely not going to fit on a menu.)

In keeping with this growing consensus, scientists are encouraging us to drop our narrow obsession with diet. It's more prudent to assess our health in terms of total lifestyle.

Maybe the state's bureaucrats should spend more time reading the writing on the wall than forcing signs up on menu boards.

Trice Whitefield is a senior research analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit organization funded by restaurants, food companies and others. Another View is a critical response to a Californian editorial or story. It may contain up to 500 words. The Californian reserves the right to reprint contributed commentaries in all formats, including on its Web page.