Sunday, July 19, 2015

Calories on Menus

The FDA has a new requirement for restaurants and other establishments to include calorie totals on menus in the coming future.   There have been extensions to the compliance date, but many restaurants are already adhering to the new standards and I, for one, am very appreciative.

I’m grateful for that single point of data mostly because foods can be sneaky.   Something that might look like a light, small salad may turn out to be more calories than I expected to eat for the entire meal.   It is a gauge, a guide as it were that can help compare one item against another.

So far with the places in which I’ve run into calorie-listed menus, I’ve made a different meal decision than I would have otherwise, mostly because the thing I might have thought about ordering turned out to be much more of a meal than I needed.

I like it.   I like the new guidelines a lot.    Sure, it doesn’t show you fat percentage or amount of daily  recommended percentage of protein, sugar count or sodium content, but that’s easily looked up on the restaurants nutritional data PDF or web page.   It’s also helped me understand why I like some restaurants far more than I should have (Cheesecake Factory for example) mostly because most of their meals are close to or over my daily caloric need.   I still go to those places, I just make different choices with the new information.

The Big Boy Update:  I poured my son and daughter some juice today.   I always pour about an inch in the cups.   Apparently my son thought he didn’t get as much as his sister because he said, “you cheated me!”   I have no idea where he learned that phrase.  Did I say it in some other context?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked me today, “what does purple and ten make?”

Fitness Update:  Fourteen miles running today and then six miles biking with Uncle Jonathan.  

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