Posted on 06/26/2007 12:17:48 PM PDT by libertarianPA
NEW YORK - Don't expect to see the calorie count for Burger King's Double Whopper with cheese on the menu anytime soon.
Burger King, McDonald's and Wendy's are among the chains planning to defy New York City's new rule that they begin posting calories on menus Sunday.
Other big fast food eateries like Taco Bell and KFC aren't saying whether they will comply, but with just days to go until the deadline, the menu boards in their Big Apple restaurants remain unchanged.
All are hoping a New York Restaurant Association lawsuit in federal court will get the new regulation thrown out. Meanwhile, the city won't fine anyone for violating it until October.
"We are not trying to avoid providing this information to customers," said Wendy's spokesman Denny Lynch. He noted that the company has made nutritional information available for 30 years on fliers and posters.
However, New York is the first city in the country to require certain fast food restaurants to list calorie counts next to menu items in type that is at least as large as the price.
Lynch says adding all those numbers will make menus impossible to read.
"You'll either have to have a Times Square-sized menu board, or it could look like a bad day at the eye doctor's office," said Jack Whipple, president of the National Council of Chain Restaurants."
Fast food chains also say they have been unfairly singled because the new rule only applies to restaurants that serve standardized portions and offer nutritional information voluntarily.
Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a health advocacy group, had a different take:
"They are afraid that when people see these eye-popping calorie numbers, they might switch to a smaller size," he said. "They feel it is gong to hurt sales."
For the record, that Double Whopper with Cheese will run you 990 calories, or more than half the recommended daily calories for an adult woman.
It’s funny. The animal rights fascists compeletely ignore the fact that we’d have to kill forest creatures by the scores in order to clear out the land required to grow enough food for everyone to go vegetarian.
Another example of the perfect-world theory of the Left.
You know....we should get a law passed that shows exactly (on internet) what any PUBLICLY Paid official eats on our money....
Bush needs to sign an executive order, pronto.
Accountability is not a job requirement for the public servant.
I believe these chains already have all the nutrition information, including calorie counts, available on all their menu items. Sounds like NY is just wanting to make things more difficult. (Does NY make ALL restaurants do this? Somehow I doubt it.)
Ignore it.
As for eating fast food Subway usually gets my money. The healthy side is a plus but to be honest a foot long Roast Beast on White made to order to me taste far better than anything the other fast food chains can produce. Wendy’s is second IMO in overall quality.
And that's not a good thing. We need to go back to a part-time legislature across the board!
4010 calories, 226 grams of fat.
Definitely — good for them!!!
Me too -- when they knuckled under to the health nuts and stopped making them in suet. Oooh, they used to be soooo good. And knuckling under only encourages them -- they're never satisfied!
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette referred to CSPI as a “consumer group.”
If they are a consumer group then the KKK is a race relations think tank.
Probably not. It takes far more farmland to grow grain for a food animal to eat than it would to feed you directly.
That said, plants are what food eats. :-)
From Straightdope:
What is the origin of the phrase “by and large?” Why do Americans say something so completely inane? My sister has been agonizing over that one for years. (Well, maybe she hasn’t actually agonized over it, but she really wants to know.) —Robert Cook
SDSTAFF Dex replies:
Americans? Olivia Isil cites the BBC’s highly acclaimed screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, where Miss Bennet remarks on the betrothal of Mr. Wickham to the odious Miss King: “by and large, it was to be expected.”
The phrase “by and large” today means “generally speaking,” “mostly” or “on the whole.” The origin is nautical, and had a very precise meaning. It was an order to the man at the helm of a sailing ship, meaning to sail the ship slightly off the wind. A similar command was “full and by” which meant to “sail as close to the wind as it can go.”
The risk of sailing too close to the wind was the danger of being “taken aback” (when the sails press against the mast and progress halts.)
Thus, when a person doesn’t want to “sail” directly into a statement, “by and large” is a hedge, a phrase of circumspection, a way of saying that the statement is an imprecise generality.
Sources:
Olivia Isil, When a Loose Cannon Flogs a Dead Horse, There’s the Devil to Pay (seafaring words in everyday speech)
William and Mary Morris, Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
The Center for Science in the Public Interest??? That's about as legitimate a group as the N.O.W. gang, or the NAA_L_CP...
I seldom eat at fast food joints but the thing that gripes me is that the portions (and the prices) of most food in nice restaurants are way to much. If they let me, I get the child’s plate. If I have to get the adult plate I order a takeout box to be delivered with my meal. I can eat until I’m full at the restaurant and eat leftovers for two days for lunch on one meal. If they are going to supersize all their meals they need to offer a “ladies” portion too at a lower price.
They are animal rights whackos are less concerned with animal rights than their aspirations for power. If they get any traction they will go after any thing that has do do with animals, dairry farms, ranches, sheep farmers, packing plants, horse stables, horse racing, zoos, pedigreed breeds, police dogs, guide dogs, what have you. The results will be a huge reduction of the animal population.
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