You go out to eat and it’s the perfect meal.
You have some appetizers — preferably fried. Lots of them. Then maybe a huge dinner salad, with lots of croutons and a sea of creamy dressing. Then a super-super-super-duper sized entree. A mountain of french fries with that (or a pyramid of mashed potatoes and gravy). Then a BIIIIIIIIG hot fudge sundae for dessert.
And then the next day you get on the scale and wonder: why didn’t that Lean Cuisine I had for lunch help me reduce my weight?
America is no longer living off the fat of the land; it has become the land of the fat.
And the FDA, in a report, has a suggestion about one way to help combat the epidemic of big butts and super-sized thighs: smaller portions. The AP reports:
Those heaping portions at restaurants — and doggie bags for the leftovers — may be a thing of the past, if health officials get their way.
The government is trying to enlist the nation’s eateries in the fight against obesity.
With hamburgers, french fries and pizza the top three eating-out favorites, restaurants are in a prime position to help improve people’s diets, a government-commissioned report said yesterday.
The report, funded by the Food and Drug Administration, lays out ways to help people manage their intake of calories from the growing number of meals prepared away from home, including at the nation’s nearly 900,000 restaurants and other establishments that serve food. One of the first things on the list: cutting portion sizes.
“We must take a serious look at the impact these foods are having on our waistlines,” said Penelope Royall, director of the health promotion office at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The 134-page report, prepared by the Keystone Center, an education and public policy group based in Colorado, said Americans consume one-third of their daily intake of calories outside the home. And as of 2000, the average American took in 300 more calories a day than 15 years earlier, according to Agriculture Department statistics cited in the report.
Realize: that’s essentially the equivalent of eating an additional meal. And where’s the additional exercise in current lifestyles to compensate for that? MORE:
Today, 64 percent of Americans are overweight, including the 30 percent who are obese, the report said. It pegged the annual medical cost of the problem at nearly $93 billion. Consumer advocates increasingly have heaped some of the blame on restaurant chains such as McDon ald’s, which bristle at the criticism while offering more salads and fruit. The report does not explicitly link dining out with the rising tide of obesity, but it does cite numerous studies that suggest there is a connection.
But anyone who has traveled abroad knows that there IS a connection: in many countries with people who have far fewer chins than many Americans, portions are notably SMALLER. This is the fact not only in many fine restaurants abroad, but in many not-so-fine eateries and many fast food outlets as well.
Reuters adds this:
The FDA commissioned the Keystone Center, a non-profit policy center, to gather information from industry, government and academic experts as part of its anti-obesity initiative. About two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.
The experts recommended that restaurants market more of their low-calorie choices. They should also adopt certain cooking methods to reduce calories. Easy-to-understand details on calories should be readily available, they added.
While the FDA can regulate food package labels, it does not have the legal power to control information that restaurants provide. Officials said they hope the report will spur companies to make voluntary changes but stopped short of saying the FDA would seek authority to intervene.
Offering similar label information in restaurants would give consumers the “same kind of information to make those same kinds of (food) decisions away from home,” FDA Acting Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach said.
Prepared foods account for 46 percent of consumers’ food budget and 32 percent of their calories, the report found.
But there really are no simple solutions. Consider:
- As anyone who has been on a serious diet knows, it isn’t just about changing INTAKE — it’s about changing ATTITUDE. A whole advertising culture has hammered in the idea that bigger is better (remember: we are talking about just FOOD here…). “It’s a greater value for all of you hearty eaters.” The advertising wouldn’t work if it proclaimed “It’s a greater value for all of you fatties.”
- Offering lower calorie food to help consumers make healthier decisions is OK but the way restaurants change menus it might be tougher to make it cost effective. In addition, in many restaurants lower calorie has come to signify for many consumers bland or inferior tasting. Healthier eating can be tasty; restaurants have to start offering fare the competes in terms of taste.
- Is it REALLY necessary for a hamburger chain to offer a package of french fries that requires a fork-lift to get back to a customer’s table? Or a container of Coke that could supply entire high school Grad Night?
And then there is the element of CHOICE: the Department of Homeland Security is not sending agents into restaurants forcing Americans to gobble miles of french fries or a plate of pasta that could feed the state of Rhode Island and two islands off Italy. Americans are making choices.
To many Americans, more is better and so they’ve gotten more — more flab, more waistline-inches and more double, triple and quadruple chins.
Pants manufacturers are doing a booming business with their “Relaxed Fit” (i.e. Fat Ass) sizes.
To be sure, if you’ve been to American restaurants and restaurants abroad, it’s clear that U.S. restaurants have played a role.
But what’s wrong with that?
After all: the U.S. constitution promises every American life, liberty and the pursuit of obesity.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.