Comments on: Federal calorie labeling mandate, cont’d

By: Mark Biggar

Mark Biggar — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:52:25 +0000

If custom orders are exempt then a pizza place just gives info about their cheese pizzas and call everything else a custom order. “But regulator, the ‘Meat Lovers Deluxe’ is only a suggested example of a possible custom order, (wink, wink)”. So now what good is the regulation. Similarly a burger join only needs to list the bare hamburger and if you want cheese and bacon that’s a custom order and the fact there’s a bacon cheeseburger on the menu is only a suggested custom order. Hey that a whole new business, a service to rewrite menus to conform to this model.

By: Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 23:10:59 +0000

I just don’t buy that a pizza place has to list the calories for every permutation of pizza. I doubt Pizza Hut would be very happy with that. Aren’t custom orders exempt anyways? Unlike some laws that hurt only small businesses, what this guy described would hurt everyone. He pays $30,000, McDonalds pays $300,000,000. There’s no way they would let that happen.

By: gitarcarver

gitarcarver — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:04:42 +0000

So, what we are saying that while it is good for people to be able to make informed choices about their diet and providing such information is easy to do, the government should not require it, since it is an easy to attain public health benefit.

Your statement makes several assumptions. First, it assumes that calorie information is available only at the restaurant. Secondly, you assume that because we can do something, we should. Third, you assume that this will have some benefit to “public health” despite the fact that for years we have been labeling food products and the level of obesity in the country has supposedly risen.

In other words, you have a law that may not benefit consumers, may not benefit “public health” (whatever that is) and will add unnecessary costs to restaurants and ultimately consumers.

By: Bill Alexander

Bill Alexander — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:03:34 +0000

Almost all the talk of public benefit ignores or tries to hide the public cost.

By: Frank

Frank — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:05:55 +0000

“That being said, the mechanics of complying is rather easy. Make a law demanding compliance is ridiculous”

One normally doesn’t see these paired sentiments.

By: Bill Alexander

Bill Alexander — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 01:43:07 +0000

That assumes they will permit calorie count by ingredient. How can Congress expect people to be able to add?

By: gitarcarver

gitarcarver — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 23:13:42 +0000

What you would do is give the nutritional information for each item per size of pizza.

So a designated serving of a 14″ pizza would be the nutritional info on the crust, plus the nutritional info on the sauce, plus the nutritional info on each topping, etc.

Dominos does just that:
http://cache.dominos.com/homev8/docs/menu/dominos_nutrition_v2.30.00.pdf

That being said, the mechanics of complying is rather easy. Make a law demanding compliance is ridiculous.

By: Melvin H.

Melvin H. — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 17:35:10 +0000

As Sara pointed out, add in the different types of crust (i.e. regular, thick, thin, stuffed, double, flavored, etc.) and the number of possible combinations goes up even more; plus, how many slices are in each whole pizza?

By: kimsch

kimsch — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 02:21:55 +0000

And sizes, 10″, 12″, 14″, 16″, personal size… how many slices is a serving? Different numbers for different sizes?

By: Christ on a Cracker

Christ on a Cracker — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 00:51:50 +0000

And now, add in “Extra Cheese”, “Extra pepperoni”, … , to the combinations.