"Big Brother" Counts Calories?

I participate in a couple of message boards that have been discussing New York's recent push to require calorie content on menus of chain restaurants and have been shocked to see how many people are passionately objecting to the law. At least one of the boards is comprised of people who are there because they have an interest in healthy cooking, there is resistance to the law. To be fair, there's not a ton of resistance, but there is still resistance. On more general message boards, however, people are quite outraged.

Since weight loss and nutrition are both very personal issues for me, I've been thinking about this a lot. More than one study has shown that the United States has an obesity problem and more than one study has shown that knowledge is a key component to weight loss. Food Diaries have also recently been shown to be a key to weight loss as well. I have to admit that this is an area I struggle with because my mental diary often turns out to be faulty, but part of my resistance to an actual diary is that the nutritional info and the food are not simultaneously together. While that is no excuse for my own slip-ups, I find the objections to this law very interesting:

• The Big Brother objection: a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a similar use of Orwell's term in a letter to the editor about car insurance. Personally, I think that people are throwing around this term a little too much and not really thinking about what they are saying. In the case of nutritional info, the objection here seems to be that requiring restaurants to publish the info infringes on the consumers right to choose for him/herself. I don't see the issue here. Would the fact that a Cheese Danish at Starbucks has 430 calories and 23 grams of fat make me feel guilty about eating it? Yes, in fact, it would probably cause me to choose something else, but would secret govt agents swoop in a physically prevent me from consuming the item? No. True Big Brother is not generally a fan of providing individuals with information.
• The Cost objection: These people claim that New York's law is going to cost restaurants so much money in reprinting menus that the restaurants will be forced to pass the cost on to consumers everywhere. This nice thing about this objection is that with the current economy and inflation, these people automatically can claim they were right. Prices will go up, but given the fact that our local Chili's has already changed it's menu twice this year, I don't think that the cost will be tied to nutrition info. While Chili's may keep many of the same items on their menu, their physical menu does not stick around for years. I do hate to think of the trees that will be killed in the name of telling people that very little at Olive Garden can be considered "healthy," but I'm pretty sure that Olive Garden was going to kill those trees anyway. So if we are revamping menus on a regular basis and were given a head's up about the law (which they were) this really shouldn't be an issue.
• The People Don't Need to Be Saved from Themselves Objection: This camp's position is pretty self explanatory. I guess these people have a point; we would hope that every American is blessed with common sense and the ability to make the best choices, but does anybody actually trust that that is reality. I would love to say that people who eat unhealthy foods are choosing to do so and are aware of the consequences, but I know that in my own experience it's just not true. I have more than one family member who will order a fried chicken salad with creamy dressing and cheese when he/she wants something "light" or "healthy." Even as a person who considers myself label conscious, I'm much more likely to eat something "bad" if I don't have the info on it (the whole fat grams I don't know about don't count issue). Let's also not forget that at one point a non-smoking section in a restaurant was scandalous and smoking during pregnancy was not considered dangerous. My biggest objection to this argument is that it implies that giving people information is a bad thing. Giving people bad information is a bad thing, but I'm not sure how that applies here.
  
• The "public humiliation" objection: I can see that the information may be problematic for some people with eating disorders. I can also see myself making a choice to not eat something because everyone in the room will know how "healthy" the item is, but mostly I can see myself not ordering something because I don't want to "spend" that many calories on that particular object. I can't see a public stoning of the person who sees the calories and then decides they still want the item, but at least they will making an informed choice. Judgemental people are going to be judgement with or without evidence.
  
• The "we're killing small business owners" objection: This is the objection of someone who likes to object without reading first. Every major news article that I can find clearly states

  The rule applies only to restaurants that have standardized recipes and that have made nutrition information publicly available on the Internet, printed brochures or other methods as of March 2007.

  Incidentally the way the current law reads, the NYT claims that it will only apply to about 10% of NY restaurants. While in theory, they could pass a law that makes this apply to all restaurants, let's save the "evils of captialism" argument for things actually do penalize small bussiness owners.
  

In general, I don't see how this law is worth of all the objections. I don't live in NY and I am pretty informed about nutrition, so the law doesn't really have a huge impact on my life, but if it caused me to think twice before ordering a menu item which subsequently led me to lose weight, I would not be upset. I find it odd that we require companies who sell food in grocery stores to provide this information without objection, but the thought of requiring the same of restaurants, sends people screaming "Big Brother."

If you want to read the full NYT article click here: New York Gets Ready to Count Calories - New York Times