Huh....I could have sworn we've always had that here in Michigan...most McD's here have it posted on a wall, usually framed and everything. Yet we're still one of the most obese states in the US. I guess we've all gotten REALLY good at ignoring it :)

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My problem with it is that the poor restauranters are going to spend their lives trying to figure out the calories in their dishes. And what happens if the chef decides that his sauce really needs a splash of X or a dash of Y? Crazy stuff. Legislating against stupidity is in itself stupid. What they should be doing is spending the time to educate people to recognise and choose the right things.

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I feel sorry for the small guy who can't afford the nutrition-analysis software to figure out the calories. It's not cheap, and it's an expense the city should bear, since they're the ones making the unreasonable demand. If you need to worry about every single calorie, you probably shouldn't eat in restaurants.

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I think I remember reading somewhere that restaurants were protesting because the nutritional information was required to be posted in the same size font as the item name, which would take up a lot of room.

I think its a good idea to have nutritional information available. To me, it is most important to have it online. Its nice to have it available in the restaurant, but I don't care where it is, or what size font, as long as it can be seen.

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To Kiriel and Carol:

The law only applies to chains of sufficiently large size (I believe the cutoff is 10+ establishments) so as not to hurt small businesses. Fast food places are exactly where this information is needed most. You may go into Burger King with the intention of eating shit but at least now you will know the full impact of what you are consuming. I don't think a lot of people really grasp how unhealthy some of the food is; they have vague notions but nothing solid to connect those notions to. Even this is just a first step towards informing the consumer. It's sad that one must read something like Fast Food Nation, The Omnivore's Dillema, or Fatland to get a more comprehensive picture of what exactly they're eating at these establishments.

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I read newspaper articles where they said that the fast food restaurants like McDonald's or BK will boycott this law...

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But WHY must one read hysterical and sloppily footnoted exposes of the fast food industry in order to grasp that fast food is mostly fat, salt, and cheaply engineered ingredients?

It seems common sense: you get a greasy burger for a couple bucks, so it must contain greasy calories, and the cows probably didn't die with smiles on their faces.

Nutrition has been taught in U.S. schools from third grade on for decades -- probably for the entire lifetime of many of the people chowing down at Burger King. The food pyramid is not a secret. The people eating fast food are either (a) too stupid to have gotten the point the first 300 times (in which case, I doubt they'll know what those numbers on the menu are) or (b) eating caloric junk food because they enjoy it more than whatever else their options are for the same meal. Seeing that a Big Mac is some gawdawful number of calories will not send them home to steam rice with a nice pot of organic veggies.

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from the cold stone creamery's website. Thanks NYC for making it that much harder to get nutritional information. http://www.coldstonecreamery.com/nutrition_ingredients.html

"We regret that Cold Stone Creamery can no longer publicly post nutritional information on our website. This development is a result of the New York City Department of Health's decision to pass a regulation requiring restaurants that already publicly provide caloric information, to post product calories on their menu boards - using the same type size as the product listing.

We fully support the intent of this regulation; however, since most of our products are made-to-order, there simply isn't enough room on our existing menu boards to comply with the regulation. As a result, we will no longer be able to provide nutritional information on our website or to residents and customers of our New York City stores. We regret this inconvenience. If you have questions about this regulation, please contact the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and refer to Health Code Section 81.50."

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