"I'm Loving It"

Our provincial government, in it's infinite wisdom, has passed legislature requiring all large chain franchises and high gross restaurants provide, in plain view (presumably on all menus), calorie counts for every menu item.

Luckily, many restaurants already do have this information at the consumer's fingertips. McDonald's has placemats and brochures with all nutritional information for their products listed.Swiss Chalet has a "HeartWise" menu with sodium and transfat info listed. Other restaurants have this as well...and more. However, the consumer has to be interested enough to ask for this, and let's be real here we're all friends, when you are in the drive thru at McDonald's, light headed with starvation, yelling kids, gas tank on empty, who really cares?

We, the consumer, know exactly what we are getting into when we eat out. High calorie, high fat, high sodium and high sugar. Yep - I don;t think it matters too much where you are lining up, IF you are lining up, your food is unlikely to provide you with an adequate amount of nourishment, laden with a side of crap.

WE. KNOW. THIS.

I am actually not against calorie counts on menus for the most part. I just wish they weren't necessary.

There are two things I would love to see from our government first.

i) Some kind of incentive to prepare and eat your food at home, sourced from local farmers, distributors and purchased as is seasonally appropriate. Trust me, it IS possible to do this on a "fast food" budget. Maybe more education is needed, I don't know how to make this real, but I wish it was.

ii) Legislature to ensure realistic portion sizes in restaurant. We (the consumer) think more is better value - but when it comes to super sizing, we know that what we save in the restaurant booth, we are going to pay in taxes to keep our already overburdened health care system afloat.

This graphic lays things out pretty clearly in my opinion.

So, in short, YAY! to calorie counts. It's something. But not nearly enough.

Find Your CORE!