Restaurants asked to print calories on menus

st.angelo

Full Member
Restaurants need to print calorie information on menus to ensure diners know how healthy their meals are, says the Government.

Calls from health secretary Andrew Lansley urged businesses to set a target date by which they will set out the nutritional value of products to their customers.

He said: 'Our aim is to give people the help and advice they need to adopt a healthy lifestyle, and I want to make it as easy as possible for them to do that.

'That's why we're working with industry to bring in calorie information on menus.
'As a nation we are too unhealthy. We cost the NHS billions of pounds a year through bad diet, lack of exercise and poor lifestyle choices. We can and we must improve this.'

He suggested the voluntary move as he introduced plans for a network of businesses, health charities and public health experts to help people live longer, healthier lives'. The group would address the issue of calorie labelling as part of its
hwork.


The first companies to introduce calorie labelling - including Burger King, Pizza Hut and Pret a Manger - did so with few problems, according to The Food Standards Agency (FSA).

The call for calorie information to be more easily available comes as the FSA announces that some of the UK's largest companies have made their menus

healthier.

Today, the agency will release details of 33 companies which decreased their portion sizes and changed the ingredients in some of their products.
They include Pizza Hut, which reduced the salt in its pizzas by 5 per cent to comply with FSA guidelines, and coffee outlet Costa, which now offers lower fat sandwiches and muffins.


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I think this is excellent news if we can see the calorific content of food in restaurants.


I would also like to see some kind of law where if a shop or store is selling chocolate, crips and other confectionary by the till that they must have an equal ratio of fruit or health food snacks.


What do you think?





 
I think seeing how many calories were in food, would stop me from ordering the bad stuff, its easy to ignore when you dont know how many calories is in food but if its written down in front of you, it would deff make a difference to my food choice!
 
I think if people want to eat something they will do.

Who is going to be responsible for ensuring the calorie information on a menu is correct. Who will be to 'blame' if it isn't. Does everyone know how many calories they should be eating in a day? Calorie intake differs from person to person. Having the calorie information on a menu will also mean they will have to have disclaimers on there.

Why can't we, as a nation, teach healthy eating and allow individuals to decide what they want to eat.

People need to be taught what consists of a balanced diet, in addition people should be allowed to eat, pizza, burgers, kebabs, crisps etc if they want to, the key is to eat in moderation.

The next thing is restaurants etc will be sued for provding the wrong info & therefore responsible for 'making somebody fat'.

Unfortunately we are becoming a 'blame' society in reality we should be making our own decisions & taking responsiblity for our own actions.
 
I think it would be good to have a rule where potassium content has to be listed along with the sodium they already have to put on packets. The sodium rule is to help people control their blood pressure, but getting enough potassium is equally important - and some people have to avoid potassium if they have kidney failure.

Sorry not quite on the topic of restaurant calories, but a particular annoyance of mine :)
 
I would love to see calorie counts on all menus, i think its a great idea in principal. But in practice is it really feasible for smaller restaurants to be able to do that? Is it actually a healthly thing to do?

Its easy for the big chains, they already buy in everything already processed and ready made, so the calorie count can be pretty much certain.

But i do have a worry about this as well. We rely heavily on processed food, and the only way that smaller outlets could do this is to turn to yet more ready made highly processed food, instead of making more nutritious homemade food, which would possibly be made slighty different every time they cooked it, but would be much better for us than something made in factory where only the people in charge there decide what goes into it. Food manufacture relies on profits, of course, so are always looking at the bottom line. They are not going to be so concerned with sourcing local produce or good quality produce, they want to turn it out as cheap as possible.

The problem is the society we live in, we rely too much on food manufacturers to provide us with what we eat. We have become a fat nation because of this. The issue isnt the calorie count on the menu, its what goes into our food in the first place. We have forgoten how to shop and cook. The reason we are fat is because of the society we have become. If we were not a fat nation, eating huge quantities of overprocessed poor quality food, this wouldnt be an issue.

I dont know how we turn the clock back, its a major major problem, but the goverment would rather tackle the 'soft' target of calorie values on menus than look at why the problem arose in the first place.

Lets put Jamie Oliver in parliament, he understands the issues and is making his own stand against it. I would vote for the Real Food Party!
 
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If theyre putting calories on Id like to know the saturated fat too, one thing to work out WW points but also putting calories on isnt going to necessarily show whats healthy and whats not. not much point going for a low cal option if its loaded with fat.

Really where does it stop??? Part of me thinks its a good idea part of me thinks it smacks of once again not making people take responsibility for their choices.
 
I think it would be a great idea to have the calorie value of meals on the menu but like others have said it could be quite difficult.

How about having one or two items on the menu that are 300/400 cals or less for instance. They do already cater for some people ie. vegetarian or gluten free. Even if your diet is not calorie counting, at least you would know that these are the least likely to sabatage your diet like the meals with tons of hidden calories are.

Tracey
 
I think seeing how many calories were in food, would stop me from ordering the bad stuff, its easy to ignore when you dont know how many calories is in food but if its written down in front of you, it would deff make a difference to my food choice!

That is SO true! For me anyway...very easy to eat healthy at home, because read the labels on everything and if anything looks "bad" I will feel bad eating it...on the other hand, if I can't see the label, I don't know how bad it is, therefore I'll eat it because I don't know how much damage I'm doing...lol, it probably doesn't make logical sense, but I'm sure anyone else who does that would understand 100%!
 
I went to this fab restaurant in Cardiff, which I can't currently remember the name of, for my birthday which had a section with about half a dozen items on the menu grouped together as containing less than 600 calories. Also had low calorie wine. I liked that - I think it's all about choice, I -could- have chosen a low calorie pasta, but I wasn't been shamed for choosing a fabulous chessy main either.
 
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