Flavelle is right in his conclusion that municipal governments shouldn't be forcing restaurants to display calorie counts: it shouldn't be city law, it should be Federal law.

Whether or not it can be proven that it changes behavior is irrelevant. People have a right to know what they're putting in their bodies. I'm not sure that it necessarily has to be right on the menu, but it does need to be accessible.

Not publishing calorie counts would take an essential "piece" out of the "puzzle" of nutritional education. Let's say an obese person goes to a nutritionist, and they're told they need to eat no more than 2200 calories a day. That obese person, should her or she ever need to eat outside the home, can't possibly know how many calories are in their food -- even this article admits that it's difficult to estimate.

People need to be able to know what they're eating. That's a reasonable expectation.

The question is, how far are companies required to go in order to present this information to an increasingly lazy public. There isn't a fast food restaurant out there that I cannot readily get nutritional information from - either at the location via a handy pamphlet or on-line.

Perhaps they should make the caloric count of each item light up - or blink rapidly to draw attention to it. Or the counter attendant could ask the customer to step on a scale before allowing them to purchase a super-sized value meal.

At some point, accountability has to fall on the consumer. Or do you assume that there are still people out there unaware that a Quarter-Pounder with fries and a coke is an unhealthy dinner choice?

If there are, I doubt adding caloric totals to items will sway their thinking.

Or dye the calorie count onto the food itself?

I agree people have the right to know, but as Yasky517 pointed out, the already have the ability to find that information. Choosing not to is willful ignorence, not inability to learn.

Having the information available online is no substitute for having it available at the point where you make your purchase. And I've seen very few chain restaurants that have pamphlets readily available or prominently displayed.

Perhaps it's the case that most people will continue eating the same food they always have, in the same amounts. But as someone who has recently moved from being obese to merely being overweight, more information is always helpful.

Perhaps we could color-code menu items into a theat-level matrix similar to how we treat homeland security.

Red items equal immenent danger to your heath - large shakes, Baconators (tm), and fried items smothered in cheese.

Orange items could signify highly undesirous items - they're not bad enough to kill you, but they probably shouldn't be eaten in concert with another 'Oranges'. - Burgers, most basic fried items, soda.

Yellow items could consist of 'be aware' items - you probably shouldn't order seconds of any of these. Steak, eggs, bread... basic stuff.

Green selections would be roots, berries and some tree bark. Everything that doesn't sound appealing to most people would fall under this category.

JonboyDC - this isn't meant to make light of your post. I agree that 'more information is always often helpful'. I'm just not sure where you draw the line that signifies how much information a company should be responsible for providing.

Yasky: Sounds like a good idea. But does anybody actually know what the different levels of terror alerts mean? Methinks nobody would understand the color-coding, unless those responsible explained it very, very slowly. (Which they didn't with the color-coded terror alerts, but that's a different story.)

yasky,

Fudruckers used to hide its calorie info and only recently- reluctantly and because it ended up getting a lot of bad press- started emailing a partial list to customers who contact the restaurant directly.

And even for those that offer the information online- what good does it do to have the information online when you're physically in the restaurant (and without an iphone?)

There's a difference in knowing that a meal is bad for you and knowing that the one meal you are about to eat exceeds your calorie allotment for the entire day.

yasky517, your point is fair. I don't believe restaurants need to bend over backwards to make the consumer aware of what they're eating. Here's what I think is necessary:

• Caloric information should be available on-site
• Informational must be accessible before ordering (an insert in a menu, similar to a wine list insert, would be fine; at fast food restaurants, brochures at the ordering counter would be sufficient)
• Restaurants that declare something a "healthy choice" or a "low-calorie choice" on the menu must also be specific on the menu -- if they're going to sell me on my low-calorie meal, I want to know what they mean by "low-calorie."