The Menus of Change -- a project of the Harvard School of Public Health and the Culinary Institute of America -- brings together industry folks, chefs, academics, and advocates to discuss private-sector and public-sector action regarding both nutrition and the environment.
The new annual report summarizes recent trends, progress, and lack of progress, topic by topic.
At the end of the day, what we as chefs and operators choose to offer as a plate of food has enormous consequences, for the health of our customers and our planet. And yet just as we embrace evidence-based guidance from the scientific community as a key reference point in decision-making, we also know that we need—nationally—something akin to a new “moonshot” program to better and more fully realize the possibilities of bringing together deliciousness with healthy, sustainable food choices. This is an issue for all of us: our families, our schools, our employees, our troops. And it needs to start with a renewed commitment to the fundamentals: what we might call “farming for flavor.”
Restaurant News published a good summary of the project's lively and engaging second annual summit, which was held this week in Boston. The article noted that three leading themes from the summit were coping with climate change, finding better ways to source protein, and increasing fruit and vegetables on menus.
The conference’s presenters tied the three topics together, presenting evidence that excessive consumption of red meat is a leading cause of heart disease and a contributor to diabetes, and that red meat — particularly beef — is a key contributor to global warming. They said foodservice operators should try to introduce other sources of protein and also replace much of that protein with vegetables and fruit, particularly since most Americans eat more protein than they need.
Menus of Change is just one of several initiatives that seem to combine sustainability and nutrition issues in higher profile ways. I am on the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee for this project. Other such efforts include the AGree agricultural policy initiative, some of the work last year of the Food Forum at the Institute of Medicine, and the current round of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (for example, see the recent presentation by Kate Clancy).
With support from the Obama administration, Congress is contemplating an increase in the minimum wage, in small annual steps to $10.10 per hour by 2016. After that, the minimum wage would rise automatically with inflation.
A group of several hundred economists signed a letter of support sponsored by the Economic Policy Institute. The letter said the proposal would help 17 million workers directly, and perhaps another 11 million workers by boosting wage expectations at the low end of the labor market. The letter said the weight of recent research shows "that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market."
A competing group of several hundred economists signed a letter of opposition. The letter says the consequence of the minimum wage proposal is "that business owners saddled with a higher cost of labor will need to cut costs, or pass the increase to their consumers in order to make ends meet. Many of the businesses that pay their workers minimum wage operate on extremely tight profit margins, with any increase in the cost of labor threatening this delicate balance."
In my own profession, several leading agricultural and applied economists signed each letter.
The New York Times this week pointed out that the letter of opposition was not really written by Vernon Smith, the lead signatory, who is a Nobel-winning economist. The letter was circulated by a firm hired by the National Restaurant Association (NRA), which has much to lose from the new minimum wage proposal. Smith is quoted saying he hadn't known who originated the statement, but he didn't mind that it turned out to be the restaurant industry, because the content of the letter is what mattered.
I asked a couple of my favorite agricultural and applied economists who had signed each letter if they wanted to respond to the controversy. One who signed the letter of support just confirmed that he supported the proposed minimum wage increase, but preferred not to say more.
Dan Sumner, a leading food policy thinker and economist at UC Davis, who signed the letter of opposition, gave this response. I had asked him if he felt "ill-used" by the restaurant industry. His email tackles the concern that the NRA support was non-transparent, discusses anti-poverty policies he judges superior to the minimum wage, and casts the minimum wage unfavorably in the context of other governmental efforts to set prices.
Parke:
I just assumed the min wage letter was developed and circulated by an interest group. Interest groups are the ones with enough interest to organize such an effort.
But, like Lucas and Smith, the proposition and argument itself is what matters to me. I have no connection with fast food places.
I put the minimum wage in the category with farm subsidies as a silly policy ill-targeted and worse than worthless for three reasons.
a. It uses policy resources, effort and attention, that would be better spent doing effective things to help the poor, such as earned income credits or targeted education programs or quality day-care or ...
b. It sends the signal that government price fixing is good policy more broadly. I know from my own specialty that government-set prices are generally bad policy. Thinking we can fix labor market problems or ill-trained workers or any other problem by having members of Congress set some favored price based on what their favorite lobby says it should be just encourages shoddy thinking.
(You will recall that is my problem with the press and the Congress continuing to act as though food stamps had anything to do with food. The reason I like the SNAP program is that is is unrelated to nutrition and the nanny notion that the feds should tell people how to spend their money, even charity.)
c. Minimum wage is so ill targeted as a poverty program and really does make it harder for some poor gal with very little to offer to get that first job. If I have to pay $10 anyway I can turn her away and hire only her sharper cousin, who already had a leg up.
Anyway, that's my off the cuff thinking.
By the way, the interest groups I have least time for are the ideological lobby groups and NGOs that seem to be very loose with the facts and analysis. These range from Heritage to HSUS to the Union of Concerned Scientists. My sense is these folks are just as likely to have an underlying bias to everything they do, and they pretend they act in the "public interest" relative to firms and groups of firms who have clear financial motivations.
McDonald's this month announced at a White House event that it would make some changes to beverages marketed to children in Happy Meals.
The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a project of the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association, praised the announcement warmly. President Bill Clinton encouraged other companies to emulate McDonald's:
If we want to curb the catastrophic economic and health implications of
obesity across the world, we need more companies to follow McDonald’s
lead and to step up to the plate and make meaningful changes. I applaud
them for doing it.
Promote and market only water, milk, and juice as the beverage in Happy
Meals on menu boards and in-store and external advertising.
That would be a big change if it were true. But it appears not to be true.
As Marion Nestle and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) later reported, McDonald's agreement with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation reads quite differently from the advertising copy and the Alliance's press release. Instead of saying McDonald's would only "promote and market" healthy beverages on menu boards and in advertising, the agreement (.pdf) actually says McDonald's would only "feature" the comparatively healthy beverages.
The agreement explicitly adds that McDonald's may continue to put soft drinks on the Happy Meals section of menu boards. In plain English, this contradicts the company's summary statement. Moreover, a confusing sentence in the agreement appears to say that Fruitizz and Robinson's Fruit Shoot count as compliant with the "CGI commitment," which may indicate that sweetened fruit soft drinks will be treated as juice. Finally, the commitment has a timeline that was not mentioned in the company's ad: it will apply to up to 50% of key markets within 3 years, and 100% of key markets by 2020 (and these key markets themselves represent 85% of all sales).
What lesson can we draw from this?
If you think the marketing environment children face today is fine, and you don't believe any major change is needed, the small voluntary changes offered by McDonald's are satisfactory.
If you want to see a substantial change in children's marketing environment, it is reasonable to think that these voluntary self-regulation initiatives are far too mild to make any difference, and that the government should take stronger action to protect our children.
If you want to see a substantial change in children's marketing environment, but you are skeptical of government initiative to improve things, you should turn to one of the best private-sector tools for defending the consumer's interests -- you should speak up for yourself in every public forum you can. Many sensible parents who prioritize their children's nutrition have simply concluded that nothing but grief comes from patronizing these quick service restaurant companies and their special meals targeting children. Tell your friends and family what you are doing as a responsible parent in your own community.
At the Menus of Change conference in Boston this evening, I especially appreciated the presentation by Kirsten Saenz Tobey, the Chief Innovation Officer of the ambitious new school food service company Revolution Foods.
The presentation took the form of an interview of Tobey by her former business school professor Will Rosenzweig, whose questions led her through the remarkable growth of her company from social entrepreneurship projects at university to a multi-million dollar corporation serving millions of meals.
Although Tobey and her collaborators had originally envisioned a not-for-profit corporation, perhaps principally with foundation funding, an instructive turning point happened when they realized that the amounts of capital required for kitchen renovations and other investments could not be raised except on a for-profit basis.
The company has had good coverage recently by Forbes, Take Part, and the Economist. A difficult challenge is cost. Revolution Foods may cost more, and San Francisco columnist Dana Woldow has been pressing for transparency on the full cost of the company's contract with that city's school system (and also rapping the company's knuckles for run-of-the-mill puffery in hinting at claims of improving student test scores).
Tobey says the company soon wants to challenge a major brand-name provider of packaged lunch meals sold in grocery stores (I can only think of Lunchables). That is a worthy villain, and, at the same time, one can't help wondering if plain lunch ingredients sold as non-brand-name ordinary food might really be the more sustainable competitor to over-packaged brand-name lunches.
This is a company whose progress I want to watch in coming years.
In the February issue of the Friedman Sprout, the Friedman School's graduate student publication, M.E. Malone describes the innovative Panera Cares cafe in Boston:
Walk into the 1-month-old Panera Cares community café in Center Plaza across from Boston City Hall and look around. Notice anything different? There are great scents, a line at the counter, laptop-tapping at a nearby table, pleasantries exchanged about the weather – all the usual sights and sounds of a weekday morning caffeine rush.
But unlike the Panera cafés you may have visited before, this one doesn’t have prices listed next to the items on the menu board. Instead, there are suggested contributions. And, if you choose, you don’t have to pay anything at all for your meal.
My version: Bloomberg has proposed a cup-size restriction for selected soda sales in restaurants, movie theaters, and vending carts.
You may agree or disagree with this proposed rule. All I want to say is that trying out the rule has some merit. There is a large literature showing that our brains mis-estimate the food energy content in large beverages, and our bodies physiologically mis-regulate liquid Calories. Quite possibly, people will get as much -- maybe even more -- utility or satisfaction from a smaller cup. Quite possibly, a smaller cup will be as profitable for NYC businesses. Quite possibly, this rule offers a modest public health benefit at reasonably low cost in terms of money and personal well-being. All of these possibilities are eminently testable. I think it would be great to see NYC try out this policy on a pilot basis, and do a high-quality study showing the impact on health and economic outcomes. Pursuing this pilot is a sober and sensible proposal.
If the pilot succeeds in promoting public health with few harmful side-effects for businesses and customer satisfaction, I would favor it.
I am not surprised that right-wing critics have gone all Defcon 1 about this proposal. They say this proposal will cause a loss of liberty. Puh-lease. We are talking about the difference between a 12-oz and a 20-oz cup of soda in a movie theater. We have a thousand personal liberties to worry about long before I will start to worry about the right to a particular soda cup size.
What really surprises me is that progressive supporters of the rule endorse the right-wing narrative about how this proposal will affect liberty. What do I mean? Consider Mark Bittman's column at the NYT this week:
On a more personal level, we hear things like, “if people want to be obese, that’s their prerogative.”Certainly.
And if people want to ride motorcycles without helmets or smoke
cigarettes that’s their prerogative, too. But it’s the nanny-state’s
prerogative to protect the rest of us from their idiotic behavior.... To (loosely) paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, your right to harm
yourself stops when I have to pay for it. And just as we all pay for the
ravages of smoking, we all pay for the harmful effects of Coke, Snapple
and Gatorade.
In essense, Mark Bittman agrees with conservative critics that the cup-size rule is part of a broader agenda to forbid personal choices that could make us fat. Bittman says it is okay for the government to take away our liberty to make such choices, because we share the same insurance risk pools, so one person's medical costs affect another person's taxes and insurance premiums.
I don't think shared risk pools should give policy-makers the right to ignore personal choices cavalierly. When describing sensible public policies that override personal choices, I would not toss in the term "nanny-state." Unlike "Yankee Doodle" and "queer," there are poor prospects for converting "nanny-state" or "ban" from a term of insult to a term of praise. A key feature of obesity policy is that many individuals themselves recognize that their short-term impulses are contradicting their own true long-term desires for health and satisfaction and good food and drink. The NYC proposal may better serve the long-term desires of most people most of the time.
If this cup-size proposal really threatened important personal liberties, I would oppose it.
Why are this policy's supporters undermining its political prospects by making it out to be more than it is? There is no ban.
The San Francisco rule that would allow toys only in comparatively healthy Happy Meals still seems to be in limbo following a mayoral veto. The rule is widely and erroneously described in the media as a ban on Happy Meals. This is untrue, assuming that it really is possible for restaurants to market attractive and affordable kid meals that satisfy the rule. At CalorieLab yesterday, Susan McQuillan laid out three appealing meals that McDonald's could consider. Perhaps the Happy Meals could become even happier. If these meals turn into bestsellers, perhaps we could moderate the shrill tenor of the debate over this rule.
San Francisco is considering restrictions on toy giveaways in quick service restaurant meals for children, unless the meals include fruits or vegetables and are within food energy limits.
I have little interest in revisiting the big philosophical division on this topic. Many, but not all, public health and nutrition folks will endorse restrictions on fast food meals for children. Many, but not all, pro-business economists will be skeptical.
To me, what is interesting in each new policy proposal of this type is how it draws a slightly different line between the proper scope for government regulation or restraint. In this case, San Francisco is not proposing to tell restaurants what food they can serve, nor even to tell them what food they may serve to children. San Francisco also is not forbidding restaurants to give toys to children. Instead, more specifically, the proposal forbids restaurant companies from using toys to entice children to eat less healthy meals.
Even so, McDonald's is responding vigorously to the proposal, taking out full-page newspaper advertisements in the San Francisco Chronicle:
We believe in kids. That probably doesn't come as news. Kids and McDonald's have always gone together.... That's why we started offering Happy Meals made with white meat Chicken McNuggets and always make our hamburgers with 100% real beef.... We also believe in kids helping other kids. That's why a portion of the proceeds from every Happy Meal we sell is donated to Ronald McDonald House Charities. Because we believe in kids. And that will never change.
Supporters and opponents can contact the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to offer input. A former student, now working with Corporate Accountability International, sends a link to the advocacy group's page for supporters of the proposed ordinance.
A new study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association shows that many grocery and restaurant foods understate their food energy (calorie) contents by 8% to 18% on average. Some restaurant items had double the stated calories.
The study, by Prof. Susan Roberts and several other colleagues here at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts, concluded, "this phenomenon could hamper efforts to self-monitor energy intake to control weight."
The National Restaurant Association today announced support for national calorie labeling in chain restaurants.
The proposed legislation (.pdf), the Labeling Education and Nutrition Act of 2008 (LEAN Act), "will provide a national nutrition labeling standard for foodservice establishments with 20 or more locations."
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a public interest group that has long supported restaurant nutrition labeling, joined with the restaurant trade association in supporting the bill. CSPI director Michael Jacobson has a related blog post at the Huffington Post.
Why would the restaurant industry, which has in the past strongly opposed such policies, now lend its support? There are several reasons. First, the bill is a compromise bill, providing the restaurant chains with some of their key policy priorities, including preserving a good deal of flexibility in deciding how to present the information and protection from what the restaurants describe as "frivolous" lawsuits. Second, the industry is facing the hard facts that menu labeling policies are succeeding at the state and local level around the country. As with other important nutrition labeling policies in the past, such as the current nutrition facts panel on packaged food, an important sector of the food industry chose to support a new government policy in return for more consistent and less burdensome regulation across jurisdictions.
An interest in raw food diets is sprouting up across the country (pun intended). Raw milk and almonds have been a topic of debate for regulators on the basis of food safety and freedom of choice on the part of 'raw foodists'. My interest in raw foods began in college and is fueled by health conscious friends that have embraced the diet. My recent review of Dr. Colin Campbell's China Study has me reexamining cultural diets.
The raw food diet is based on the principle that the cooking process strips vital nutrients from natural foods and that eating your food raw not only retains all the minerals and nutrients of fresh foods, but it makes it easier to digest and can help detoxify your system.
According to Cathy Wong at AltMedicine, the diet typically consists of unprocessed, preferably organic, whole foods such as: fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, grains, legumes, dried fruit, seaweed, unprocessed organic or natural foods, freshly juiced fruit and vegetables, purified water, and young coconut milk. At least 75% of food consumed should not be heated over 116 degrees F.
Specific preparation techniques aimed at making food more digestible and to add variety are: sprouting seeds, grains, and beans, juicing fruit and vegetables, soaking nuts and dried fruit, blending, and dehydrating food. Raw foodists have kitchen equipment consisting of a food dehydrator in place the microwave, a juicer, a blender or food processor, and seed sprouting containers.
Critics of the diet warn of nutrient deficiencies, specifically in calcium, iron, B12, protein and calories. They also say that the body produces the enzymes it needs to digest foods. Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham recently released his provocative new book, CATCHING FIRE: How Cooking Made Us Human, which was recently reviewed by the New York Times.
As an RD, I thought I'd hop over to eatright.org to see what the American Dietetic Association Public Relations Team had to say:
The premise of the raw food diet is to cook foods below 160 degrees Fahrenheit to keep food enzymes intact so that the body can better absorb nutrients in the food. The problem with this theory is that the body already makes the enzymes needed to digest and absorb foods.
The raw foods diet encourages you to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, which is a definite nutritional plus. But there are real food safety risks. The diet calls for eating a variety of sprouts, many of which grow in environments that can promote harmful bacterial growth. And cooking foods below 160 degrees Fahrenheit can lead to foodborne illness.
As with any diet, when evaluating the “raw foods” approach, ask questions. If you think “This sounds too good to be true,” it probably is.
The diet contains fewer trans fats and saturated fat than the typical Western diet. It is also low in sodium and high in potassium, magnesium, folate, fiber and health-promoting plant chemicals called phytochemicals.
These properties are associated with a reduced risk of diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. For example, a study by Koebnick et. al. published in the Journal of Nutrition found that consumption of a raw food diet lowered plasma total cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations; however, they also found increased levels of homocysteine and lowered HDL cholesterol. An observational study by Donaldson et. al. published in BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 2001 found fibromyalgia syndrome improved using a mostly raw vegetarian diet. Since the literature is sparse, I recommend a some peer reviewed studies like this:
Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days is an independent documentary film that chronicles six Americans with 'incurable' diabetes switching their diet and getting off insulin.
Maybe a complete raw food diet isn't ideal, but neither is the Standard American Diet (SAD) where "everything fits." A recent trip to the first raw food restaurant in Portland, Maine furthered my interest in the cuisine. GRO (Grassroots Organic) Juicebar/Cafe/Chocolatier was a rewarding meal that left me awestruck. The food was moderately priced, packed with flavor, and left me with a strange food high. We feasted on:
Sea Veggie Shitake Collard Rolls- Wilde Main sea-veggies, marinated shitakes, sprouts and choice veggies wrapped in a live collard green with almond-lime sauce and served with sesame-ginger dipping sauce
Nori Dumplings- A creamy blend of cashew, pine nut, garlic and seasoning with shitake and spinach folded with love into a nori triangle and served with Tamari (glueten free) and Nama Shoyu (raw soy with gluten)
Sesame Spicy Cold Noodles- Fresh Zucchini noodles tossed with crunchy vegetables and an awesome almond lime sauce
Sin-Free Apple 3.14- A fresh and crisp apple pie with a cashew and brasil nut crust and topped with macademia sauce.
Our guide and owner Igor Rakuz fed us a ton of raw chocolate made in house with raw cocao butter, coconut oil, maca, and agave nectar. We sipped on Kava tea, known for its ability to promote relaxation, and talked about his vision for the restaurant which has come to be a community epicenter based on food sovereignty and health. The days following city council members were meeting to discuss the removal of fluoride from the city's water.
The restaurant also impressed me in the sustainability methods. The back room was sprouting much of its own food and an in house humidifier where they grew their own mushrooms. They were also composting, recycling, reusing and reducing their impact in a variety of ways. They only use local spring water that the employees fetch daily. The restaurant was donned with literature and books for customers to educate themselves on wondrous super foods as they waited for the friendly crew to loving prepare their meal. On the wall was the quote: "Food Sovereignty: the ability of any group of people to define, create and distribute their food and water independently."
Massachusetts joined New York and California passing legislation to provide consumers the calorie information for the food they are purchasing at food establishments.
Food establishments with 20 or more locations in Massachusetts will be required to provide that information at the point of purchase ― either on the menu board or on the restaurant’s menu. The new rules, which will take effect in November 2010, will cover approximately 50 chain restaurant companies, representing more than 5,000 locations in Massachusetts. An 18-month implementation timeline will allow local health departments and the industry the opportunity to familiarize themselves and prepare for the new regulation.
While more research needs to be done, preliminary research shows that providing consumers with calorie information does effect choice. A literature review by Harnack and French, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity in 2008, showed that five out of six studies provided some evidence consistent with the hypothesis that calorie information may influence food choices in a cafeteria or restaurant setting. They claim, however, the results "suggest the effect may be weak or inconsistent."
Health regulations like the one passed today are popular with consumers. A study conducted in February 2009, gauging reaction to New York City’s calorie labeling law, showed that of those who visited restaurants with posted information, 89% considered it a positive change — and 82% report that nutritional information on menus had made an impact of their ordering.
The measure adopted today is part of Mass In Motion, a wide-ranging statewide initiative to promote a range of wellness activities for Massachusetts residents, businesses and communities. Last month, the Public Health Council also passed regulations allowing for Body Mass Index measurements for all school children in Massachusetts.
Additionally, health officials will soon announce grants for communities to establish wellness initiatives at the local level. These efforts, combined with an expanded state-sponsored Workplace Wellness program and an interactive web site (www.mass.gov/MassInMotion), represent the most comprehensive effort to date to deal with the serious problem of overweight and obesity in the Commonwealth.
The new regulation underwent a thorough public review process that included two public hearings and the submission of comments from more than 100 individuals and groups. More information at www.mass.gov/dph.
On a national note, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn have introduced the Menu Education and Labeling Act (MEAL) geared at chains with 20 or more outlets. The restaurants would be required to post calories on menu boards and food displays. In addition, saturated fat, trans fat, carbohydrates and sodium would be required on printed menus. The house version of the bill (HR 2426) has 34 cosponsors and is in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The senate bill (S 1048) has three cosponsors and is in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
The quick-serve restaurant industry publication QSR reports that KFC's coupon promotion for grilled chicken, featuring Oprah Winfrey, has been a public relations "nightmare."
If she would have taken the time to think about all this, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she would see that encouraging these practices is not in line with the Eckhardt Tolle, Live Your Best Life, “We will all be judged on how we treat the least among us” persona she sells on her popular television show. Individual choices do matter, especially the choices of those with enough money to buy every person in the United States two pieces of chicken.
Was it the pointed contrast noted at Ethicurean between Oprah's KFC promotion and her earlier reporting on production practices (as described by Eating Liberally)?
Naw. The restaurant executives and QSR reporters never noticed those commentaries.
The "nightmare" in the QSR headline is the overwhelming demand for chicken from the coupon-wielding masses, causing what Gawker describes as near-riot conditions in some store locations.
The Washington Times -- you know, my regular reading -- had this coverage in April about the debate on a similar bill in the West Virginia statehouse.
When state legislators in West Virginia sat down in a House committee last week to dine on fatty doughnuts and breakfast biscuits, a video of the proceedings hit YouTube and earned mention by "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno.
The irony of the now viral meeting was that the legislators snacked on high-calorie foods just as they killed a contentious bill that would have required most restaurants in the state to post calorie counts on their menus in an effort to encourage healthier eating.
Across Appalachia and in other areas of the country, rising health care costs from obesity-related illnesses are alarming, with insurance costs rising to treat such conditions as heart disease and diabetes.
In response to the widely held view that we all know what is in the restaurant food anyway, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has posted an online quiz. How'd you do?
Have you eaten off a Weight Watchers menu in the past four years?
If it was at an Applebee's you might want to give Tara Kelly a call.
If you remember a few months back I blogged about the calorie labeling lawsuit that alleges misrepresented calorie counts at Applebee's restaurants from items off the Weight Watcher's menu whereby independent tests revealed some items to contain double the fat and calories posted.
Apparently now 4 separate law firms have launched class action lawsuits and a recent news story reported Gilbert Oshinsky lawyer Tara Kelly hopes to represent, "every person who has eaten from the Weight Watchers Menu in the last four years".
Given there are over 2,000 Applebee's in 49 states, 17 international countries and one U.S. territory, and lots of folks on Weight Watchers, I imagine Tara will be pretty busy.
In the new issue of the Review of Agricultural Economics, agricultural economist James Binkley of Purdue University confirms that restaurant and fast food meals have many more calories than home meals do (see abstract).
For example, for a typical adult, and holding constant other variables, a lunch in a table-service restaurant has on average 184 more calories (kcal) than a lunch made at home. A lunch at a fast-food restaurant has on average 121 more calories than a lunch made at home.
A difference of 120 to 180 kcal per day is enough to contribute to weight gain over time.
Two concerns about restaurant meals are their energy density and their total calories. Binkley found that fast-food meals were the most energy dense, while table-service restaurant meals had the most total calories. Meals from home scored better on both counts.
From the Wiley-Blackwell press release:
“It is misleading to focus concerns about the nutritional effects of increased food away from home primarily on fast food. All food away from home should be considered,” Binkley concludes.
Perhaps in response to the many critics of menu labeling skeptical that the average consumer even knows how many calories they should be eating in a given day or meal, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has started advertising what could be considered general nutrition information-- how many calories adults should consume in a day-- in NYC subway cars. The three-month campaign, which began this past Monday, also includes the number of calories for a few example foods like a giant muffin and a chicken burrito.
Following on the calorie labeling scheme for chain restaurants implemented in July in NYC, Californians will also be receiving even more calorie information. Last week, the state was the first in the nation to require calorie labeling for standard menu items at restaurant chains.
It will be interesting to see how consumers respond to the mandatory and voluntary provision of calorie information, in addition to how restaurant chains respond, perhaps by increasing their low-calorie options if they find changes in trends of consumer food choices.
In May, we linked to the Miami Herald's coverage of the struggle between Florida tomato pickers, Burger King, and a dirty tricks company hired by the fast food giant. Earlier this month, the Green Fork's Leslie Hatfield provided an update on recent developments in an article and accompanying video for the Huffington Post.
For Burger King, the Goldman Sachs-owned chain that signed with CIW [the Coalition of Immokalee Workers] last May at the US capitol building (but only after months of protests, a blog scandal and allegedly spying on CIW's partner group, the Student/Farmworker Alliance) the penny-a-pound increase amounts to an estimated $250,000 dollars per year. To put that in perspective, Eric Schlosser's November 07 op-ed "Penny Foolish" pointed out that "[i]n 2006, the bonuses of the top 12 Goldman Sachs executives exceeded $200 million - more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year."
More recently, organic grocery chain Whole Foods came to an agreement with CIW. That Whole Foods was beat to the table by such cheap, decidedly un-organic eateries as Taco Bell, McDonalds and Burger King may seem ironic to those who snidely call the chain "Whole Paycheck" and may expect that those relatively high prices might translate not only to the food being organic, but also fair. This is, in part, why we're seeing from food advocates a shift away from "organic," a label that has not only been co-opted by huge corporations, but also speaks only to a food's impact on personal health (and to a much lesser extent, ecological health, but only in its initial production and not, say, its shipping) toward the more inclusive term, "sustainable," which is also being co-opted by industry but at least, in theory, speaks to other aspects of food production, including labor.
Now, CIW is after Chipotle, the growing chain that has built a reputation for social responsibility in the organic and local food arenas, and whose "Food with Integrity" campaign stands to take a major hit in the credibility department if they don't sit down with the Coalition. But that could prove difficult for Chipotle, which released a statement last month (before things got really crazy, even) warning share holders that the weak economy, coupled with rising food costs, would likely amount to lower profits than last year's.
No one knows what the future holds, but as our economic system hovers over the proverbial "rock bottom," it seems like a good time to revisit our policies, both national and personal, when it comes to the money we spend. What is the value of a tomato, and why? What (from fertilizers and pesticides to labor to transport) went into it, and does its price reflect those inputs? Or has a market driven by speculation and subsidies installed a false cap on that price, creating a decidedly unsustainable system that benefits CEOs over citizens, puts the squeeze on smaller businesses and leaves the laborers to pick up the slack?
Ken at Fast Food Facts and the Fast Food News blog has updated the format of his online search output, to look like the familiar nutrition facts panel on packaged food. This allows readers to see the information in a format that many have already learned to absorb fairly quickly.
It is wrongly said, sometimes, that consumers know these nutrition facts well already, but simply lack the willpower to act on the information. I always learn new stuff from a good tool like this.
