I also worked at a place that made smoothies from fresh squeezed orange juice. Depending on the season the orange juice was different shades of orange. That is because different species of oranges grow at different times of the year. The calorie count has to be different if the taste, sweetness, and color vary.

Cuts of meat vary. How do you know what the calorie count of each steak is? The marbling and the weight is slightly different. They just guess.

I get the feeling that the biggest characteristic of the statist is that he has never understood the golden rule. Number 2 is that he has never understood the difference in how people spend their own money vs. how they spend others money (even with the best intentions).

Don’t complain to me when your pizza comes with onions, or worse, anchovies, and you can’t do a thing about it.

I do not understand your comment on the government regulating what is said on blogs.
My point is this: I suspect that you, like me, don’t like blogs where the level of rancor is high and the civility is low. There are people who do like sites like that. The type of a blog that one visits is based on the desires of the visiting person. I appreciate high civility and view it as something I look for in a blog. I was trying to equate that to your appreciation of restaurants that list their ingredients. If given the choice between a restaurant that lists ingredients and calories and one that does not, I suspect that you would choose the one that does. Whether the restaurant lists ingredients and calories doesn’t matter to me.

What blogs I visit depends on my choice and the features they offer. I don’t want the government stepping in and demanding a certain level of civility on blogs. I don’t want the government saying “you have to publish the ingredients and calories.” If that is important to you, you will patronize those restaurants that make that information available and won’t patronize those that do not. You will choose – just as I choose a blog – where to go based upon your criteria and issues that are important to you.

I would just be happy if they supplied the information on-line. I could easily check out the information before-hand or on my phone.

Isn’t there a difference between the restaurant supplying that information and the government forcing them to? Once again, if supplying the information is such a great idea and so many people support it, the restaurants that do not post the information will be at a competitive disadvantage. The market will force them to post it rather than some governmental agency that will require more inspections, more government as well as more lawsuits.

The marketplace can decide this without the government.

Unfortunately, restaurants do not like advertising what they actually are selling. Several years ago one chain, I believe it was Ruby Tuedays, listed their calories, fat, and salt content on the menu right next to the items. It was not very helpful for their business and they quickly stopped. People would rather be ingnorant about what they were eating than having it staring at them in the face. I suspect many people just went somewhere else. I would just be happy if they supplied the information on-line. I could easily check out the information before-hand or on my phone.

There are a lot of variables in the making of a recipe in a restaurant. A friend of mine is a chef who says that the amount of an ingredient in a sauce or food can depend on how fresh the ingredient is, where it was caught / raised, the time of year, the humidity, etc. There are a lot of variables. (To say nothing of the fact that chefs guard the ingredients of a recipe like a state secret.) Locking a restaurant into something that by its very nature cannot be consistent from day to day, very little sense to me.

I understand and support your appreciation of restaurants that publish (or give estimates) if calories, contents, etc. To me, it makes no difference. If I want portion and calorie control, I’ll stay at home and cook my own meal. Therefore, nutritional information in a restaurant should be something that the restaurant is free to give or not give. Because you appreciate that information, you are more likely to go to a restaurant that gives that information out. It is a marketing plus to you. I respect that. To me it doesn’t matter one iota.

This type of situation highlights a great deal of what we see here on Overlawyered – if an idea is so great, the market will adopt it. Instead, the government feels necessary to tell us what is required to protect us from ourselves and thereby opens up the floodgates of more ridiculous litigation.