Saying nuts to Nutricate?

The apparent success and consumer popularity of municipal laws in New York City, Seattle, Philadelphia and elsewhere that require chain restaurants to post nutritional information on their menus means that (1) more American cities’ elected officials will propose similar legislation, and (2) the chain restaurant industry will fight tooth and nail and lawsuit against every one of them.

This conflict inspired a fellow named Jay Ferro to come up with Nutricate, a tech gimmick whereby, when you buy a restaurant meal, that meal’s nutritional content — calories, carbs, fat, and protein — is printed out on your receipt.

Ferro sees this as a compromise measure to please both sides in the nutritional info debate. Others, however, might see it as pointless.

For one thing, each restaurant’s owners or managers can decide which bits of data to provide; there’s nothing mandatory at work here, and no particular incentive to offer information that might be offputting, such as a downright frightening calorie count.

But the idea behind Nutricate, says Ferro, is not to embarrass the restaurant; rather it’s to offer “an opportunity to communicate with their customers.” Fine, but they already have such an opportunity. It’s called advertising. And it is invariably self-serving, if not flat-out misleading. Why would the receipt info be otherwise?

The nail in Nutricate’s coffin, however, might be the simple fact that the information is forthcoming only after the food has been paid for, which misses the whole point of providing consumer-useful content information. Back to the drawing board, brother Ferro.

Fast food kids’ menus — a great place to begin the content disclosing

An example of why such information is increasingly meaningful:

One in every four American kids aged 4 to 8 eats at least one fast food meal in an average day, which makes the findings of a recent Michigan State University study unsettling, notably the researchers’ discovery that a minuscule 3 percent of designated “children’s meals” offered by fast food restaurants meets federal recommendations for nutritional content.

For example, 75 percent of the kids’ meals provided insufficient calcium and 85 percent came up short in vitamin A, and perhaps most significant, given the national wave of childhood obesity, 65 percent contained excessive amounts of fat.

Without going into a detailed recitation of the various menu items covered by the study, which was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the advice to parents is to stick to children’s meals that feature deli-style sandwiches, milk as the beverage, and side dishes that include fruit, especially iron-rich raisins.

The wrong lesson

Also being perhaps not fully helpful to the cause of childhood health and nutrition are some teachers in Oregon, where the sale of junk food in schools is not allowed. The teachers in question are asking for an exemption from the rule, that they may be able to buy fatty and sugary and otherwise unhealthy snack items from the vending machines in the faculty lounges.

After all, they contend, they are not children; they are grown-ups. Which is why, some parents grumble, they should act like it and set a positive example, at least on school property, for their students. Or at the minimum, bring their own damn Doritos and Dr Pepper from home.

At last word, the Oregon state Senate was slated to vote on the matter.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 and is filed under Childhood obesity, Fast food and restaurants, Food miscellaneous, Kids and families, School lunches and junk food, Snacks. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Permalink.