From the Philadelphia Daily News:
COUNCILWOMAN Blondell Reynolds Brown's menu-label legislation passed in City Council by a 12-5 vote last week. Hooray!
In case you're unfamiliar, the new ordinance requires restaurants with 15 or more locations to show customers the numbers on calories, fat and transfat, carbohydrates and sodium for all the food and beverages on their menus - the goal being to help Philadelphians make more educated food choices.
Why Councilmen Frank Rizzo, Brian O'Neill, Jack Kelly, Bill Greenlee and Jim Kenney voted against this is anybody's guess. Are they unaware that diet-related cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and stroke plague our city, costing millions in health care and countless lives lost? Isn't this innovative legislation just one of the many baby steps needed to educate the public and help people become more proactive about their health?
Sexy, it ain't. But calorie counting, along with regular exercise, is the best, most cost-efficient way to keep our collective weight and health in check. That's why I voiced my enthusiastic support for this bill last spring and urged readers to do the same.
Earlier this week, I hit the streets to ask a cross-section of Philadelphians what they thought about the new law. Everyone I spoke with thought it was a great idea.
"It's one of the best things to help people make better choices," said one man I spoke with on Walnut Street in Center City.
"All restaurants should be required to do this, but this is a start," one woman told me when I stopped her to chat on Walnut Street. "It's up to the public to really use the information, though."
No kidding.
Michelle W. - she didn't give me her full name - a health-care worker at Pennsylvania Hospital, is still in shock about her discovery during a trip to New York City that her favorite T.G.I. Friday's dish, pecan-chicken salad, comes with 1,000 calories.
"I wanted to die," she said. "I thought it's a salad, it's healthy. Now I don't eat that anymore."
One woman I spoke with supported the new regs, but wondered how consumers will know restaurants are being truthful.
"It's easy to say that this thing only has four grams of fat when in reality it may have eight. That's what I'm concerned about. Who's monitoring them? Who's holding them accountable and is it the truth?"
Two men I chatted with at a City Avenue Dunkin' Donuts cited family histories of diabetes and their own high blood pressure as reasons that they'll put this information to good use. "I need to know," one man said.
But will people want to know how many calories they're consuming? Some folks I spoke with were skeptical. "Most people won't even pay attention," said Joe D., eating a breakfast sandwich and coffee with his wife at Cosi.
"It's a good idea. It's a beautiful thing . . . for people who want to live healthy. You know, if I don't want to get high blood pressure and diabetes. But most people eat pure fat and garbage. They love shoveling garbage in their mouth."
Joked Michelle W. - at least we think she was joking - "My thoughts are I will never eat in a fast food restaurant again."
To their credit, I noticed that Center City Cosi restaurants have calories prominently displayed on their menus already. Way to go, Cosi!
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