Friday, March 9, 2007
Weight: 243.0 - Plateau #2, Day #22
Actually, I've lost weight each day for the past 5 days, but I call this a plateau because 22 days ago, I weighed exactly what I do now. My last plateau was 31 days, and then I suddenly dropped 4 pounds, so maybe that will happen this time, too.
Anyway, my goal for March is to drop 2.5 pounds and get down to 242.5. Since we have 20 days to go, I still have a good shot at beating that. Patience, and keeping on doing the right things -- that's the name of the game.
Took a nice 1/2 hr. walk with the wife and dog last night. Very enjoyable.
Tonight we're probably going out to eat at a restaurant, so that brings me to today's rant . . .
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Restaurants & Nutrition Information
Recently, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (cspinet.org) came out with a study of dishes put out by some of the large fast food chains. Some of the meals that might appear to be healthy, e.g. Ruby Tuesday's “"Fresh Chicken & Broccoli Pasta," were found to contain over 2,000 calories and more than 120 grams of fat.
The New York City Board of Health passed a ruling that will require New York restaurants to post their nutritional information. And legislation is pending in 19 other states, including my own California, where a bill is pending before the House.
The argument against this is that it costs about $125 per meal to get a nutritional analysis, and that this would put a lot of small restaurants out of business.
I'm not a restaurant expert, so let's put that issue aside for a moment, and concentrate on the larger restaurants first -- those owned by large chains, and those grossing over $500,000 per year. And don't forget, many of the restaurants you think are small local chains are actually owned by big food companies. I recently went to look up the caloric content of a meal at California Pizza Kitchen, only to find that it's owned by Kraft Foods.
Let's not forget that these same arguments were raised when legislation was pending requiring nutritional information for food sold in grocery stores. Imagine where we'd be without that! Today, we're able to carefully track our calories in FitDay or our own spreadsheet, largely because we have all the information at our fingertips, and we have a reasonable degree of trust that it's accurate.
But calculating the caloric content of a restaurant meal is a true crapshoot. If you don't believe it, just go to one of those restaurants where the cooks are out there in front of you. Watch how much oil, butter, and salt goes into EVERY dish! Far more than you would use at home, that's for sure. The meal you THINK is only 1,000 calories could very well end up to be double that.
And that doesn't even take into account the ridiculously large portions they serve these days.
So I'm strongly in favor of this legislation, at least for the larger restaurants and the chains.
Another argument they covertly make (they can't really be very public about this) is that diners will tend to order less if they see all those calories.
Has this happened with grocery store food? Hardly. There's more junk food sold now than there ever was. At any given time, most people will ignore the nutrition labels and eat to their heart's content.
But for those of us who are trying to change our lives, this would be a tremendous step forward. So write your state lawmakers, and urge them to help!
