Monday, July 6, 2009

So dog gone full


Last Wednesday, my state of California became the first state in the USA requiring all chain restaurants to provide calorie counts for all menu food items. The new law requires food facilities to provide nutritional information about the total number of calories, grams of saturated fat, grams of carbohydrates and milligrams of sodium. Many fast food restaurant chains have already been doing this for years, but now my California big brother makes it compulsory with fines for those establishments who do not comply.

What will we do with this information? Make different choices? Perhaps initially, but in the long run I don’t think so.

Take me for example. On the same day that this new law took effect, I made a “business decision” to eat bad as I was starving after a very hard gym workout on an intermittent fasting day. Around 7:30 p.m. that evening, I went to Carl’s Jr. and ordered a double western bacon cheeseburger and a chocolate milk shake made with real ice cream. My choices wouldn’t win an award in a healthy eating contest but this combo definitely left me full and content.

Curious about what I had consumed, the next day I visited the Carl’s Jr. website to determine the nutritional content of my previous evening’s meal. It “costed out” at 1,670 calories consisting of 156 grams of carbohydrates (38%), 66 grams of protein (16%) and a whopping 85 grams of fat (46%).

The new law would not have altered my food choices that evening but it did guarantee me access to nutritional information that confirmed why I was so dog gone full.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

2 comments:

Charles Long said...

Sometimes it feels good to "cheat."

Justin_PS said...

Yeah, it does...

Until you try to work out.