Sounds like a long overdue idea to me. Maybe looking up on the menu board and seeing that a McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, medium French fries, and a medium Coca-Cola Classic has 1,330 calories might cause someone to choose the Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken and Newman’s Own low-fat balsamic vinaigrette dressing (total calories: 360) instead, but we’ll have to see. Human nature being what it is, visiting a fast food restaurant is often viewed as a “treat”—even if you had lunch at McDo’s or Taco Bell yesterday.

 

Of course, my position is that you shouldn’t be eating in any quick-stop restaurants. Our Fast Food Nation is hooked on greasy fried foods, captivated by sugar and sweets, and relatively clueless about what’s healthy to eat. This obliviousness has exacted a heavy toll on our national health: the scientific research on obesity is unanimous on this, but a casual stroll at an NFL game on a Sunday afternoon would confirm that America, land of the free and home of the brave, has a star-spangled obesity problem. We’re not even close to our perfect weight, in great part, because of the lousy foods we eat—or what passes for inexpensive nutritional sustenance and familial enjoyment these days.

 

So will the new legislation signed by “The Governator” out in California have much of an effect? Self magazine, in this month’s issue, surveyed 100 New York women about the new calorie-disclosure laws in New York City. Here’s what they said:

 

• 79 percent liked that the number of calories were now clearly posted.

• 55 percent said they ordered less because now they knew how many calories were in their meal.

• 13 percent stopped going to certain eateries altogether.

 

I take these results with a grain of salt . . . or a ton of salt since we’re talking about fast food. One, the survey polled only women, so we don’t know what guys are thinking, and two, people of both sexes often tell pollsters what they think pollsters want to hear. In other words, who’s going to say that they didn’t like knowing the number of calories posted or that they ordered less food? They don’t want to look like hogs!

 

At the same time, I think knowing that a Chocolate Chunk Cookie at Starbucks has 420 calories will cause a few coffee-lovers to think twice about “splurging” on that sweet treat.

 

We’ll see how posting calories on menus at all chain restaurants (it’s just not fast food places) plays out in California. After all, information is good, and maybe that information will prompt changes in what people eat for the better.