My God, that looks delicious.

Ezra,
On a more philosophical level, or maybe just more a strategic level, you may want to point out to libertarians such as Jacob Sullman that St. Adam (Smith) wrote that the 'invisible hand' exists anywhere that people, collectively, could make their preferences known and enforceable. That would include collectively electing Democrats to a Legislature to create and enforce transparency laws.

I was in a McDonalds in Chelsea, NYC, about a week ago, and I was surprised to see that the calorie information for every meal was clearly printed on the overhead menu behind the registers. That seems relevant. McDonalds is trying to change, here.

Apparently they are conforming to NYC law. Never mind.

I thought about getting the buffalo wing combo at Nathan's in Coney Island a few weeks ago. Then I saw that it contained an estimated 3008 calories (seriously) and I decided not to.

That's one nasty looking sandwich.

Oh itll have shock factor for a few weeks. The fatties that go to mcDs will pretend their shocked, thinking that their expanding waist lines obviously had other causes then the 12000 calorie diets their on.
Then people will ignore it again just like warnings on cigarettes.

A critical part of this problem that you seem to be unaware of Ezra, is that people dont understand food. They are willfully ignorant of this as its a service that is provided to them. Just as the common man doesnt understand the low-voltage wiring provided by the phone company.

You as an aware individual look for positively sourced ingredients, cook them to your standard, and enjoy a holistic meal. Others are literally feeding at the trough that is 1. easy to get to.
2. appeals to their baser 'food memory'. (comfort foods)
3. is cheap.

You imply that by making things more difficult to obtain, more expensive, and add information people will ultimately have an enlightened diet. Truth is most people just dont care as much as you do. I do, and many people here reading your column do, but dont take that insulation as a read on the rest of the world.

HomeEc in schools (the cooking and food part) is probably a good starting point. Why, because literally most people parents nowadays dont teach their children to cook (and with that have an understanding of food) and/or dont know how themselves. That is the true evil behind the fast food culture.

Quizno's notoriously did not used to have any nutritional information available for their menu, not just in the restaurant, but on their web site too. (Notoriously, if you ever tried to look it up.) It turns out the reason they didn't is because their subs are outrageously high in calories and fat. I know, of course their subs are high in calories and fat, but I'm talking seriously high. Some of their large subs are more than 2,000 calories and over 100 g of fat. To me, that's unexpectedly high, and I don't think that information should be hidden from consumers. (Google "quizno's nutritional information" and several of the hits on the first page are about this.)

Why do we even pay attention to libertarians? I mean, I'm sure there's somebody out there arguing for a return to monarchy, but do we bother engaging them?

There's want and then there's want:

""If customers really were clamoring for conspicuous calorie counts, restaurants would provide them voluntarily." That sentence competes for space with a poll showing 84 percent of Californians support caloric labeling requirements"

When asked, people will easily offer support for a convenience that they would never or hardly ever bother to seek out otherwise.

Jeebus,

Because a libertarian POV...whether from a self-professed libertarian or not...is always present in any policy debate.

Liberals and conservatives both selectively espouse libertarian points of view on almost every issue. They just take turns on it depending on the issue.

Years ago, when the medical evidence was even less clear than today, I went on some diets to get to what was then thought to be the ideal weight for an adult male: the same weight you were as a high school sophomore - in my case, 160 pounds (I was on the track team).

My 'handbook' was from a Stanford U. MD, called the Stanford Diet. It required calculating and writing down the coloric intack for each meal, and estimating from tables the caloric expenditure of various daily activities, and making sure the balance was negative (more output than input) by a couple hundred calories a day. I lost 20 pounds, and kept it off for maybe 10 years even though I rigidly dieted only for like six months. It changed my eating/exercise patterns. Let me say that looking up the caloric food inputs was a pain in the diet and very hard to do. Expenditures were much easier to compute from tables of activity type and duration.

Their really isn't any alternative to this kind of energy input/output control (and some folks will have genetic or epi-genetic reasons even this won't work) if one wants to avoid being overweight. But you have to learn the patterns.

All that said, I'd eat that burger in the picture in a Portland second if it was available.

But what makes better sense: each customer trying to figure out total calories (and calories from fat/carbs) on their own in the restaurants, or having the owners be required to do this calculation once (or periodically) or hundreds/thousands of people required to do it on their own because some influencials believe in 'free markets'?

"Then people will ignore it again just like warnings on cigarettes."

This should be the selling point for the "personal responsibility" crowd - look, we told you that McHeartAttack burger is 1500 calories - eat at your own risk.

If NYC was serious about it's labelling law, it would apply it to every single establishment, not just chains w/ greater than 15 locations.

While I understand many of the objections to far-too-detailed listing of nutritional content on food, it seems to be calculating an average calorie range for a standardized meal and side items (heck, even soda and tea) is not that terribly complicated, and doesn't take up that much room on the menu. Anyone who retails food has to do this, why not restaurants? I would enjoy this convenience and make use of it, but it's hard to argue that it would appear naturally in the free market . . . unless half the restaurants started doing it spontaneously, how would the consumer have an effective free market choice to pick the restaurant that displays calorie content vs. the ones that do not?

This is fairy-tale business fetishism, where the "libertarian" imagines that big business is in perfect competition, and that it never affects government policy.

It would be like saying that US civil rights and race relations laws were unnecessary when passed - true in the sense that pressure from the grass roots movements was so powerful that they would eventually have won out (absent federal repression), but in fact that situation points to the opposite conclusion. If something is inevitable and beneficial, one might as well have legislation to hasten it.

Sullum's first argument is beyond inane. There have been lots of things that customers clearly wanted--say, safer automobiles--that the market didn't necessarily provide to them without the help of government regulation.

At the risk of being said to espouse "nanny state" type rules, I think there are some things that are simply not about what people want; they are about what people need to make informed choices and more practical decisions. The NYC calorie count law strikes me as just that (and a reason why I think Bloomberg is genius) - simply providing the information, it turns out, affects people's eating habits and choices. As a Starbuckian (not in NYC, but nearby), I can tell you at least 10 customers a day point out that they had no idea that things like coffee cake had 400+ calories. And, because once people know that, they stop eating them quite so much... Starbucks is adding lower calorie, healthier choices.

I know it seems intrusive, or overly "parental" to some... but I think providing information is hardly the hand of Big Brother some, like Sullum, want to make it out to be. It's just information; what you do with that information... well, that's up to you... which, it seems to me is just what a libertarian wants. If the city mandated the lower calorie food... that would strike me as a step too far.

As for the "chains with more than 15 outlets" aspect, let's be clear that the first biggest hurdle was getting McDonald's to cave; Mickey D's has resisted this project forever, precisely because (like Super Size Me) they know the high calorie and fat content is a problem and they hate to have to talk about it. It's different at a Jean-Georges or a Le Cirque, and there people can be somewhat understood to know more and to make a more informed choice to begin with... but yes, I too think ultimately it will get applied to every restaurant, or every restaurant will appreciate that it can help business, not just hurt it. If you actually think about what calorie and fat counts actually mean.

Weboy, that's because the glibertarian fantasy of perfectly competitive markets and the invisible hand require that all sides have all the necessary information. So rather than give people the information they need, it is already assumed to be in the hands of the people.

So if you didn't spend an hour before leaving for work figuring out the caloric content of your lunch (can't do that during work that would be wrong) it's your fault and giving you that information at the time of your decision is an unnecessary market intervention.

Finally, the libertarians don't specifically want monarchy, they appear to want feudalism

According to Sullum, the beef I buy doesn't have a country of origin sticker on it because I don't want it, instead of being due to fierce opposition from a number of corporate lackeys in Congress!

It is spelled "Hardee's," though, not "Hardy's."

Obviously this is the most important piece of information on this thread.

Still waiting for the glibertarians to explain why meat companies that want to bring products to market labeled "tested safe for mad cow disease" are forbidden from doing so by federal regulations. Here we have a market, customers, and a supplier that wants to serve customers with additional information. Yet a government run by the glibertarians closest allies, the Republicans, forbids that. Do tell.

Cranky

An interesting parallel: a hypothetical world where restaurants didn't post price information on their menus, or quite possibly anywhere on the premises - possibly on a web site, but not always. You go up to the register, order your McCain POW!Meal (or whatever), they swipe your card, and away you go - no register display, no printout, nothing - nor would it appear in itemized form on your bank statement. Granted, next time you checked your balance, you might be surprised to see how small (or large) an amount you spent over that period, but . . .

(Don't know if most restaurants would be in a hurry to change that, either).

Cranky,

The funny part is that ACTUALLY THINK you made some kind of point.

John V,
The REALLY funny part is that you left out the exact key word in your sentence and thus it cannot be interpreted. I will assume the missing word was "I".

But in any case, I take it (a) you are a glibertarian (b) you don't have an explanation either. So I am still waiting.

Cranky

This is easy to do in fast-food industry which has a limited set of pre-designed meals. But can you imagine a nice restaurant where the chef is trying to experiment with a new dish, to put it up as a "special" and see if the customers like it. Perhaps just for a day or two.

Can you imagine that chef having to send each such expermental dish to the lab for caloric analysis first. Wait a couple of weeks for results. Pay for it (it is not cheap!). Then serve it for a day. Then discover customers do not like it, but would prefer arugula instead of lettuce - start a whole cycle again!

Thus, I would love to see the new law for "industry" restaurants, but nice restaurants cannot really do this. They can perhaps have some "rough" scale of calories, or a list of calories of individual ingredients, but not of the "meal of the night".

No Cranky,

The missing word was "you".

And why should I explain what Republicans do? Funny that you make this point in a thread about a libertarian opposing regulation.

You obviously don't understand libertarians very well if you're going to twist logic into knots in order to somehow put a silly regulation on libertarians that not one libertarian would support. And why would you feel this so accurate? because Republicans "did it"?

Cranky, I stopped at glibertarian. If you choose to discuss things like an 8 year old your arguments will be treated accordingly. BushCo! Darth Cheney! Rethuglicans!

"And why should I explain what Republicans do?"

Because libertarians have been getting Republicans elected for years. Maybe not you personally, maybe not your personal definition of "libertarian", but lots of self-identified libertarians have been sufficiently thrilled by Republican tax cutting that they vote for them repeatedly.

Kylroy,

wow! What power you lay at our feet. Libertarians are a swing vote. Self-identified libertarians voted some 70-30 in favor of Bush in 2000 and it was near 50-50 in 2004. Others simply voted LP and couldn't be bothered. And yes, I didn't vote for GOP either time ( I actually voted Kerry in 04 and abstained in 2000) at any level of federal government.

Regardless, The large middle area of independent centrists and moderates...not to mention conservative Dems...were "electing" Republicans these last 14 years or so...not libertarians.

Luckily for the Dems, libertarians seem to be trending even more Dem for 08.

You should be happy.

Libertarians choose what matters to them. Sometimes it's matters of war and peace or social issues, sometimes it's economic issues, sometimes it's just "kick-the-bums-out" issues.

I'll you what though, if Dems would libertarian-ize their focus a bit where they easily can, it would do them wonders.

Measurement!

It would be trivially easy to determine the effectiveness of calorie posting. Pick like franchises that have different calorie posting practices/requirements, look at what gets ordered, adjust for some variables, and, voila, you know whether the posting affects consumer decisions.

Of course, results might be skewed by franchises with different posting practices/requirements offering different menus, but that would just indicate that the market had validated the effectiveness of posting.

If we could get as many as 10% of the people who regularly eat in fast-food restaurants to moderate their orders based on posted calorie counts, that would be how many billions off the public-health bill over the next 30 years?

Nice, but not nearly as sexy as the pic of a Ben's Half Smoke Matt posted earlier.

Why do we even pay attention to libertarians? I mean, I'm sure there's somebody out there arguing for a return to monarchy, but do we bother engaging them?

+1! Great stuff!

Still waiting for the glibertarians to explain why meat companies that want to bring products to market labeled "tested safe for mad cow disease" are forbidden from doing so by federal regulations. Here we have a market, customers, and a supplier that wants to serve customers with additional information. Yet a government run by the glibertarians closest allies, the Republicans, forbids that. Do tell.

I can't speak for "glibertarians," but a libertarian would say that this is a very good example of

1. how regulations often end up benefiting established corporate interests rather than consumers, and

2. how power can corrupt even those groups, such as the Republican Party, that claim to support limited government.

They might add that no observant American could possibly believe the GOP are the libertarians' "closest allies."

In other words, you are "still waiting" to hear how libertarians would explain a situation that in fact illustrates two familiar libertarian arguments. I suspect you are "still waiting" for a high school diploma as well.

I have coronary artery disease. I haven't eaten a burger in 10 years. I like them, but they will kill me.

I'm none too pleased with remarks of the form, "Well, this will really shape up those other (fat) guys." Cast the log out of your own eye first. There are plenty of people thinner than me that each much, much worse.

I'm Californian, and I'm in favor of restaurant reporting. It'll help me assess fat content, not in burgers, I know I can't eat them. But in other stuff. If it pressures restaurants to reduce fat, or offer more reduced fat items, so much the better.

I'm a restaurant owner in California. If this law was passed here, and applied to me, I'd have to spend thousands of dollars to do calorie testing on food. I would have to either raise prices or cut a couple of employees to make up for it.

The next effect would be that I would reduce the size of my portions. People that are responsible enough to eat healthy most times, and then go out for a rich meal to reward themselves will be punished because some people can't put down the oreos.

The next effect would be that I would get rid of all specials. Why would I spend a thousand dollars to calorie test 2-3 dishes per night? The costs can't be justified. Changing my menu is worth the small added cost now to keep things fresh. This makes it prohibitively expensive.

Finally, I'm positive this will have no effect on obesity. I am very calorie conscious. I know how to calorie count because I taught myself. I know that a felafel sandwich wherever I go will be in the 500-700 calorie range depending on other ingredients, and I know it through my own research. Only people like me, the people who already watch what we eat, will be affected by these numbers.

Mike is wrong in the last post. Figuring out calorie counts for a restaurant owner is pretty simple. Whatever, go ahead and tell stories and vote for McSame.

Actually it's not, not that you would know. If there's a law like this, having the count slightly wrong would lead to horribly damaging lawsuits. It has to be exact, or extremely close. You need labs to do the testing, and it's expensive.