A new study shows that forcing fast food chains to put calorie counts on their menus has not affected people’s eating habits.
Good. Now let McDonald’s sue the FDA for the expense of printing all that useless propaganda and see how that affects regulatory habits.
[Note: I wrote the headline as a joke. Turns out that was an actual recommendation in the article]
Back in 1983 or so, a female congress critter was involved in multiple rear end collisions in a short period of time. She decided that the problem was that people couldn’t see the brake lights of anyone other than the person directly in front of them (rather than it being the actual problem of following too closely). So, she wrote the bill that got passed in to law that gave us the third brake light requirement starting in 1986. So, 30 years of third brake lights, and how has the rear end collision rate changed? According to government statistics, it hasn’t. These lights add $50 to the cost of every new car sold in the USA (and anywhere else they are sold), but they add NOTHING to safety. So, if an average year of sales over that time was, say, 12 million, the 360 million cars sold since then have had $1.8 billion added to their cost, for no meaningful return. That’s $1.8B that the government has basically forcibly moved from other businesses to the auto manufacturers for no benefit to the consumer. And they KNOW this, and they won’t repeal the law (I’ve sent letters to my congress critters asking them to do that, and get nowhere).
And you wonder if they’ll let restaurants sue the FDA for wasting their money on calorie information on menus? Not a chance.
This is all temporary, a stop gap measure until the government takes over all food distribution in the United States. You will then be given, gratis, the meal of the period [Breakfast, lunch or dinner] which will contain all the needed nutrients and calories as determined by a panel of nutrition experts employed by the Department of Health, Welfare and STFU and eat what you are told.
Yep, we’re just this far away from single-paella.
The whole problem is that no one EVER went into McD’s looking for a healthy, nutritious meal.So big surprise that posting calorie counts didn’t change behavior.
OTOH be aware that the computer in your car can easily be reprogrammed with an automatic speed limiter. NTSB floats that balloon every now and then.