Food For Thought
After narrowly ducking my waiter’s dreadlocks in the Union Square Cosi, I glanced at my entrée options and saw, for the first time, nanny state New York’s latest adventure in babysitting: the city’s regulation that over 2,000 restaurants must now post calorie counts on their menus.
Now, normally I’m not one to count calories because A) I’m bad at math, and B) I’m a dude (really can’t emphasis that last bit enough), but when your salad’s stats are staring at you like a batting average on a baseball card, you tend to take notice.
The Grilled Chicken TBM Sandwich has 790 calories? What part of grilled rather than fried is this menu not understanding? WTF, TBM?
And the Thai Chicken and Peanut Noodle Pasta is a gut-busting 1500 calories? I thought Thai people were supposed to be skinny?
Even the lentil soup was close to 300 callies! What the hell is even in a lentil?
I don’t want to know all this, thought I. Leave the calorie counts at the grocery (which is the food equivalent of work) and away from the TGIFriday’s of the world (which, we can all agree, is the culinary equivalent of a vacation, and who cares what’s in the Fiery Chicken Popper Sandwich if you’re on vacation!)
I then began to realize why the New York State Restaurant Association was so against printing these hard truths: every light item on the menu was significantly cheaper that their more caloric counterparts.
This is going to hurt their bottom line—but will it help the local lardies? Are we really better off knowin people still smoke.”
Perhaps. Still, I suspect we’ll hear little of the lost revenue suffered by a favorite French bistro down the block, and a lot more about some nonexistent carrot craze that’s swept the city.
But that’s the thing about a government that knows what’s good for you. Sure, those aforementioned cigarette warnings may not have worked, but everyone wants to talk about how Bloomberg supposedly decreased the number of city smokers and increased air quality with his prohibition-approaching tobacco taxes. Yet nobody wants to examine the black market that sprung up overnight in, say, my old East Harlem neighborhood when the price gauging took effect.
The same guys that used to push rock on me as I exited the 116th street subway station were now accosting me with cheap stolen ciggies (I would’ve taken them up on it if they ever sold anything but menthols). What’s next — pushers addling up to people offering the Grilled Chicken TBM Sandwich that Cosi discontinued because people stopped ordering it?
Sorry Bill, but shouldn’t we all be taking dieting advice from OPRAH???? She certainly has the greatest influence on the planet and she obviously knows how to keep her “schoolgirl” figure! (Quoting Greg)
All of “you people” (Forgive me ACLU) need to stop worrying about dieting. We all want to look nice, but dieting alone will not do this. Try something called ‘Exercising” !!!!!! Eat in moderation and maybe walk a mile a day. Bill, for you, just watch even more monkey porn! I believe Andy has it sitting on hia desk today.