April's CR Diary

"Why are people offended by the public display of facts?" April, such info, specificly about foods commonly labeled "bad", (you CRs call it "gak") can be very triggering to some with eating disorders. People with eds already feel so much guilt over what they eat/don't eat. Also, you haven't quoted from any of those who take a rather scolding tone about it all. To their way of thinking, overweight people are particularly in need of such information. It's rather insulting to target us. Still, I know that if I want a treat like that, it's going to be high in calories, fat grams (usually) and sugar. Since I particularly would like to avoid trans fat, I don't mind the info, but I also don't think it should be used against anyone, fat or thin. It's almost a moral decree to list the ingredients. That's because food actually is moral to many people's minds. It's frequently bad or good. People even say: "I've been bad" when they overeat and/or eat a dessert or something fried. So, it's never really only about the information. It's never just fuel to anyone, even people who do CR.

I wonder if these same people hate it when menus display prices. I mean, it can really be quite a downer when you see how much a dinner at a restaurant costs. It can, in fact, spoil your enjoyment of the meal or - horror of horrors! - influence you to make different choices. Wouldn't it be so much more enjoyable and less stressful if you simply handed the waiter or waitress your credit card, ordered whatever your little heart desired, and just let the chips fall where they may in terms of how your choices impact your financial situation?

April, I am 100% with you on this one. I utterly fail to see how posting calorie and nutrition information could hurt.

The people who don't want to know that info have--at least in that forum--failed, in my opinion, to defend their position in a reasonable way. "I don't need Mommy to tell me what I should and shouldn't eat"?? All I can say is, well, gee, lucky thing she's not there and it's only a card with nutrition information.

As you know, April, I totally, enthusiastically affirm the occasional impulse-purchase of a treat. But, I equally affirm doing it with your eyes wide open.

In my opinion, if you're *really* at peace with your food choices, you won't care if you happen to see a card that says "Calories: 330" next to the treat you've decided to buy.

It brings up an interesting issue, though--the degree to which food is irrational in all our lives, the degree to which it's entwined with emotion, with instinct, with our baggage about our mothers. Clearly, for the people who are bothered by it, this information is triggering all sorts of associations that have little or nothing to do with the food itself.

I think facts are the enemy of the fat acceptance culture. Facts like excess weight puts you at risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes are a problem for them. So, of course, they prefer to be ignorant of the contents of the food they consume as well.

It continues to amaze me, the 10-20% of Americans who can rationalize and intellectualize away any shred of common sense (and facts). "Calorie theory"...give me a break. Your weight is directly proportional to calories eaten and burned, period. It's not a theory when all experiments support it. There's alway someone who doesn't believe we landed on the moon, Nazis kill millions, and the earth was formed eons ago.

This is a very simple issue. Give people information at the time they are purchasing/eating food. I believe many will choose the 200 calorie drink instead of the 700 calorie drink when they see that information. And if Dr. Stacey wants to have heart disease, that's her choice. I suppose she likes to drive 200 kmh without a seat belt on the autobahn as well.

Just to be clear, Dr. Stacey did not make any of those comments. She raised the question, and her commenters wrote the comments I cited.

She didn't take a position, to my reading of the entry, on the topic, just raised it as a topic of discussion.

a

If calories are equal for everyone, then there wouldn't be people who could eat much and gain little (or the reverse). Fat people would also easily lose weight when they cut back on calories and exercise (instead of what too often happens: metabolism slows as the body attempts to re-establish its extremely high set-point). Robin, good point, except fine dining establishments often have menus with no price listed (I guess the heart-attack has to come at the end, when you see what your dinner Really costs).

I agree with Eris--calories are *not* equal for everyone.

With regard to calorie information triggering ED folks--I can understand this, but part of recovery is learning to manage triggers in the environment, like seeing a picture of a skeletal actress or a headline about weight loss on a magazine cover. In this case, I feel that posting information--and I think it should be full nutritional stats, not just calories--is a social good.

If you were buying a box of Hostess cupcakes at the grocery store, the stats would be right there on the package. How come *that's* not upsetting to people? Because we're so used to it we don't notice it. If restaurant foods start being labeled too, I think the same thing will quickly happen.

Do these same people have problems with the stickers on cars at dealerships that state technical information about the vehicles for sale? Are they upset to see (right there on the window!!) that the car they fancy uses high-octane fuel? Or what about those little labels on clothing (right there on the neck!!) that indicate the fabric content. Does that insult them? Probably not. How is that different from having the nutritional information about a food item they're considering purchasing, on a little card beside it? Get a grip, folks.

Eris,

I've heard of this practice of omitting prices from menus, but I must say I've never encountered it myself, and I've visited some very fine dining establishments indeed. Presumably, the people frequenting the places to which you refer are so wealthy it truly doesn't matter to them how much the food costs. My guess is that if you tried to pull something like this at the neighborhood Denny's, however, people would balk. Just a guess.

My point is that in general, people expect to know exactly how much money their dinner will cost up front so they can decide whether it fits into their financial budget. To me, asking restaurants to display calorie counts on their menus is just as reasonable.

How can I decide if a particular dish will fit into my calorie budget if I have no idea how many calories it contains? It's impossible to tell just by looking at the food. Even seemingly innocuous items like grilled veggies can easily harbor hundreds of hidden calories in the form of butter, which is frequently added to so-called "healthy" dishes at many restaurants.

Just wanted to point you to a new discovery, being published in the science journal Cell, on one explanation for how calorie restriction extends lifespan:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/uow-rud041708.php

It has to do with ribosomes, the protein-making factories in living cells, mutating. When TOR (an enzyme) signaling is reduced in response to dietary restriction, one side effect is that the organism also decreases the rate at which it makes new proteins, leading to cell mutation and slowed aging.

Here's some interesting comments I read this morning on software methodology, but I think it applies to this topic as well...

Reality always wins in the end,
-- So get there sooner. --

Pretending to know what we don't know
-- gets in the way of learning --
(and we can't get caught trying to learn it!)

The world runs on trust. How do you get and maintain trust?
-- Go back and read the first two. --

What I take-away from that is that the nutritional content is there, it exists, it's reality, and the consequences of that reality are also real. One of the principles of a free society is freedom of information, so it should be out there, and as others have said, then people can decide what (if anything) to do about it.

What may be more amazing is how few people gripe about NOT having this informatio available. I was invited by a friend to go to Fuddruckers recently, and since this is a big chain, I figured I'd find some kind of nutritional information online. Nope. And that's not unusual. Why does the public allow this?

Maybe because they're not living in the real world. As long as they don't know, they don't have to deal with the reality. As soon as that information is posted, they will feel guilty, although, interestingly, I don't think it will change their habits.

We have nutrition information on all packaged food you buy in the grocery store. Know what's the second biggest aisle in the grocery store? Snacks and cookies, followed closely by ice cream.

Great post, April!

"How can I decide if a particular dish will fit into my calorie budget if I have no idea how many calories it contains?" Oh, definitely, Robin, I see your (and other people's) points about this. Yvonne is right about triggers too (although not everyone is in the same stage of recovery, so the responses on EWHAED probably reflect this). The people commenting on EWHAED are probably not doing CRON, either, of course. Not everyone wants to count calories. They might still eat healthy, though. I don't count calories, never did, in fact. But that's not why I'm fat. One reason that I'm fat is because the stuff that I crave is highly addictive, and it's very hard to keep it in line (although possible). That stuff, the hostess cupcakes and so forth, are clearly labeled. Like Yvonne says, having that info does not stop me if I binge. I barely look at it. I already know it's bad for me, but it still doesn't stop me.

I, for one, am offended that when I *want* nutritional info on the food at restaurants, it is frequently not available... I don't think providing info is "telling" people what to eat-- and besides, seeing as how, what is it now, 80%, of the American population is overweight, there are quite a few people out there who could probably benefit from the nutrition info being readily accessible.

And as far as people who claim that they are healthy (overweight or not), this would show that they have some knowledge about healthy eating. How do you know if something is actually healthy without the ingredients listed? What if your "healthy" broccoli is drowning in a pool of butter? Is that how people eat "healthy" yet continue to be overweight?

Why should I be denied nutritional info because someone else doesn't want to look at it?

I don't eat out a lot (it's not worth the money to me) but a few years ago I started avoiding sit-down national chains (Chili's, Olive Garden, TGI Fridays, etc.) because I got so annoyed that I couldn't get any nutritional information. I choose what I eat and I really dislike that they weren't allowing me to choose.

It actually made me like McDonalds even more. I know that a grilled chicken caesar has 220 calories, 10 grams of fat and 30 grams of protein. If I want the vinaigrette I add in another 40-50 calories ( I use the pour in lid method rather than the drench salad method). But, if I'm not feeling the low-cal thing I also know that a double cheeseburger is 440 calories, 23 grams of fat, and 25 grams of protein. And if I add a McFlurry I should just abandon nutrition entirely :)

I'm actually really impressed with fast food chain's online nutrition info systems. You can get info for each component or an entire meal. Sure, it's a nutritional wasteland by and large but I like that it's there.

I work in the food industry and I can pull back articles from our files about people screaming about how nutrition labels on food were the end of the world. They got over it and sales of processed garbage didn't fall (center of store grocery is still going strong). I don't think menu calorie counts will be the end of our economy.

I also commented on the Dr. Stacey forum. I, for one, stated I did not have an issue with it, but would, though, want ALL nutritional data. Calories, in themselves, at least to me, are only part of the picture. I'm in recovery from anorexia and don't have a problem with CR. BUT, I could see why people would find this problematic because this information is never neutral, it is part of a wider culture that is pretty obsessed with dieting. Frankly, I don't think this is doing anything to reduce obesity, it only makes us more deeply obsessed - but in a way that doesn't help whatsoever. What I find problematic about this approach, is that it completely misses the cultural and social dynamics at play in weight control. The focus on individual food items really misses the point here...

I should point out, too, that most of Dr. Stacey's readers are people with eds or whom are recovering from an ed. As such, they (we) are going to bring to the discussion a very different set of experiences when such info is read. For some in recovery who have obsessed and obsessed over calories, this can be really and truly difficult, because what is harmful to one person is essentially being culturally endorsed through such advertising.

With all that said, I was one commentator who was non-plussed by it...

Zubelida

To Robin and Eris,

On the menus without prices, I have only seen that once at a very $$$ place - and the prices were only left off of the woman's menu! The menu handed to the guy I was with had the prices on it! I was shocked.

I agree with Robin though. Even though restaurants where I live currently don't have to put the info on their menus, hopefully the info from NYC chains will find its way online so I can at least look it up before I eat there.

Why should I be denied nutritional info because someone else doesn't want to look at it?

==

good point

Sara L, the practice of providing menus without prices is an old one that I remember quite clearly from the 50s, 60s and even 70s. It was generally only available upon request from high-end establishments and was often asked for ahead of time by a man who really wanted to impress his date by taking her to a fancy restaurant but didn't want her to feel either embarrassed or obligated to make her selections based upon price. (You can take that any way you want!) Mind you, what twit wouldn't know that lobster bisque would cost a hell of a lot more than consomme! IAE, times were different. You simply didn't talk about money or what you paid for things; that was considered very bad taste. Most young women did not proceed with their education past high school and therefore worked at very low-paying jobs. They could never afford to dine somewhere really nice, so it was often done out of kindness, although not always. There definitely was the attitude of "Don't bother your little head with such things, darling!" There were also the usual snakes who expected the girl to be so blown away with the experience that she'd sleep with him. Honest; I'm not making this up! Such menus were also requested by hosts who were taking another couple or small group of business associates/potential clients out for dinner and wanted to give them the freedom to order whatever they wanted while simultaneously demonstrating the host's generousity. God, I must be old .......... :-)

"...and was often asked for ahead of time by a man who really wanted to impress his date by taking her to a fancy restaurant but didn't want her to feel either embarrassed or obligated to make her selections based upon price." I kind of like this, if being treated. If someone's treating me to a nice meal, I often do feel some sense of wanting to chose a less expensive dish. Oh well. Just call me retro. Anyway, god forbide people don't get their info. I am not against it, completely - I was just offering another perspective, that's all. On Dr. Stacey's blog, Rachel is for the labeling, and she is also for fat-rights. Her blog is TheF-Word.com. Check it out.