EDITOR’S VIEWPOINT/What’s next on the menu?
I saw it coming when my fellow workers were first sent outside the building to smoke. Even though I’m not a smoker, there was something disturbing about segregating a group of people and creating a new class of social criminals. “They won’t stop at smokers,” I predicted, and, sure enough, they have found something else to have a beef with — especially if it is charbroiled and sitting next to a mound of fries and a shake.
Now, concerned about our increasingly unhealthy lifestyles, at least one community is firing the first shot over the super-sized bow of America’s overeaters. Phil Mendelson, a member of the District of Columbia Council, introduced a bill in mid-July that would require chain restaurants to list nutritional information next to each menu item.
The attempt to fight overeating has its precedent in efforts to curb public smoking, including the well-publicized ban in New York City. Restrictions on where people can smoke also exist in other cities such as San Antonio.
Although Washington, D.C., may be the first local government to try to legislatively address overeating, several states have been considering similar measures. Fortunately, none have passed.
Seeing that food could become the next target of today’s Prohibitionist movement (not to mention alchemist lawyers eager to turn fat into gold), restaurants are fighting back. Fast-food chains such as McDonald’s are adding healthier meals to their menus, and the Applebee’s chain is working with Weight Watchers to develop some lighter fare options for its menu. The owner of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster chains is testing a new type of restaurant in Orlando, Fla., where nothing on the menu is more than 500 calories.
I believe the D.C. council member when he says that the intent of his proposal is to help consumers make better-informed choices. I would suggest, however, that better-informed choices are not the issue. We are pressured to make choices every day — on our jobs, while driving and even at home. We go to restaurants to escape the stresses of life, where our only choice is a pleasant one — deciding what food we want to eat — even if it is a meal that would give a nutritionist a coronary. The problem may, in part, be what we eat, but clearly it’s how much we eat.
And why are we eating so much? Maybe it’s because of the pressures of modern life, such as the endless choices we have to make all day coupled with a relentless series of threatening messages — from the news, from our bosses, from the government — warning us of what else may be going wrong, or might even kill us.
Maybe if the messengers would lighten up a little, we would too.