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New York City now requires restaurant chains with at least 15 outlets nationwide (including my beloved McDonald's) to display calorie counts on menu boards, menus or food tags. This means that you will find this depressing information in about 2,000 locations all over the city.
Will this new law have the effect that the city's health department desires? I don't think so.
Granted, it is heart-stoppingly appalling to discover that my favorite sandwich at Cosi has 801 calories and 34g of fat. And that blueberry scone at Starbucks boasts 400 calories and 18g of fat. The problem is... do YOU know what your target calories are each day and, if you do, how about the maximum grams of fat for a person of your size, weight and sex? I probably gotcha on that one. You could find out... most of us just don't care.
And so it will go for those of us who are educated enough to (already) know that Big Macs are hazardous to our health. We know, and could afford to eat more healthily: we're just too lazy to do so. For us, the new signage will soon become yet another piece of the scenery to which we pay little attention.
And for those low-income families for whom obesity is a terrible problem, (a) less of them are likely to have the information the rest of us do, and (b) what are they supposed to do about it? A 2007 study revealed that a low-income family would have to devote between 43% and 70% of its food budget to fruits and vegetables in order to meet federal dietary guidelines. And healthy, low-cost foods, in general, tend to be less available to the poor.
This action by the city health administration is a band-aid that will do little if anything for those who could use the most education and assistance. The city would have been better off taking the cash these companies are spending to change their signs and putting it into the school lunch program or some other initiative that delivered a direct benefit to the community.
This post was originally published at http://www.stephaniefiermanmarketingdaily.blogspot.com
