Lately, there has been some buzz about restaurants being required to list the nutritional content of their food. Many people have suggested making nutrition facts part of the menu. Is this a good idea, or a bad idea? I think the answer is: both.
First, it is an excellent idea to inform consumers about what they are eating. Knowing how many calories and fat are in food, knowing that a certain dish gives you eight times the RDA of sodium, and other information are necessary for consumers so that they can know what they are putting into their bodies.
Forcing restaurants to print menus with nutrition facts on them, however, is a bad idea. The new menus with nutrition facts would be bulky, unreadable messes of graphs and tables, with no room for food descriptions or depictions. Consumers would be easily confused and unable to decide what foods they do or do not want to eat. It would be disastrous to force nutrition facts onto the menu.
Having them posted elsewhere, though, is an excellent idea: perhaps in a prominent chart displayed along a wall, or in a terminal as is done in Uno's restaurants across the nation. Consumers need to know what they are feeding themselves; being aware that the chicken-broccoli alfredo has 1900 calories and 63 grams of fat is important. But since most people will ignore the information and happliy gorge themselves on the food, why bother putting the info on the menu?
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Yea, for one thing, it's too much info that takes up space to read on a menu, when you are just thinking about food, and for another, you are too obsessed with calories and such, that you can not even enjoy a meal or try out something new, because you are afraid of getting fat or something. They should maybe create a nutritious facts list, but separate from the menu, of the most popular foods, so it wouldnt be every item on the menu that would make it too wordy.
right. for those of us who want nutritional facts, i dont see it being too difficult to request an extra pamphlet.
plus think about all the waste it would cause to reprint our menus >.<
I actually read them more than I read books, which really isn't good, lol. As a nutrition facts reader, I would appreciate it being available to me though.
I'm pretty sure they're all available as it is, just on request.
(if you can't see the fnords they won't eat you)