Do The Obese Have The “Right” To Become More Obese?

In an attempt to help those who cannot help themselves from becoming obese, the government has implemented new legislative fiats requiring restaurants to post the calorie count of each item on their menus.   Unfortunately, the heavy hand of government dictate is producing counter productive results.  Consider the following study showing that forcing restaurants to post calorie information has actually had no beneficial impact but instead, has perversely resulted in consumers consuming more empty calories, not less.

After Calorie Warnings, Diners Order More Calories

Before food czars get any more punch-happy on their own Kool-Aid, they need to be purged of the illusion that their laws are actually working. Last month, New York University and Yale medical professors published a ground-breaking study, which shows that New York City’s law requiring fast food chains to post calories on their menus doesn’t reduce their customers’ caloric intake.

Sixteen municipalities including California, Seattle, and Portland have passed laws similar to NYC’s, and the Menu Education and Labeling Act, which would impose labeling regulations nationwide, is pending in Congress.

But the researchers’ most striking finding was that customers actually ordered more caloric items after the law went into effect than before, despite the fact that nine out of ten customers who reported using the information said they made healthier choices as a result of the law.

But the problem may also be more complex. It’s possible that people who are less educated may actually think they are eating more healthily than they are notwithstanding the calorie numbers staring them in the face.information and that 15% said they used it. But these figures demonstrate the law’s failure—not success. Despite the fact that people were readily presented with

The Department is boasting that 56% of customers saw the caloric the nutritional information, 85% of them ignored it.

The lawmakers who enacted the calorie posting regulations succumbed to the fallacy that everyone thinks like them. They probably reasoned that because they would make healthier choices if presented with nutritional information, everyone else would as well. But maybe what consumers actually want is a delicious meal at a low price.

So what’s the next step for an imperial government gone mad with regulations and micro control over the lives of their disconnected citizens??  You can see the next step coming.  For those of us unable to think properly, based on bureaucratic notions of proper eating habits, the only option left is to impose more draconian rules.  If fat people can’t stop themselves from gorging on food, the next logical legislative fiat would necessarily involve requiring restaurants to forcible eject or refuse to serve those individuals that the government “deems to be obese”.

I wonder how that will work out?

Why are we overweight?

The world is full of tough questions, but why we are overweight is not one of them.   In fact, most of us know the answer - we put on excess pounds when we consume more calories than we burn.  The problem is, of course, that unless you keep an exact daily list of what you eat and record the corresponding calories, it is very easy to exceed daily caloric requirements.  From the Wall Street Journal, here’s something that may help many of us.

Massachusetts adopted broad rules requiring restaurant chains to post calorie counts on their menu boards, joining California and New York City in a move that the restaurant industry has opposed.

The Massachusetts regulation, which applies to chains with at least 20 restaurants in the state, will take effect in November 2010. Restaurants must post the number of calories in each menu item near the menu listing or price.

Advocates say they hope that posting calorie counts will lead consumers to make healthier eating choices, although evidence so far is scant on that point. About two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Federal health guidelines recommend consumption of 1,600 to 2,400 calories a day for non-exercising adults.

For those of us trying to maintain a healthy weight, knowing the caloric content of what we consume is critical.  I am frequently shocked at the amount of calories in various menu items at popular restaurant chains.   A soda, appetizer and an entree  can easily add up to more than twice the calories one needs in a full day.

The key to losing weight is not rocket science -  consume fewer calories than you burn = weight loss.  This can be done without exotic diets and books and pills.

One of the best ways to lose the extra pounds is to 1) calculate how many calories a day you burn and 2) record the calories of every item you eat in a day to ensure that the total is less than your daily caloric need.   Consider the following useful research:

You aren’t what you eat. You’re how much.

That’s the message from a two-year National Institutes of Health-funded study that assigned 811 overweight people to one of four reduced-calorie diets and found that all trimmed pounds just the same. It didn’t matter what foods participants ate, but rather how many calories they consumed.

The study, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, put participants on one of four diets:

After two years, they had lost nine pounds on average and trimmed two inches off their waists regardless of which diet they followed.

The message is that dieting may be “much simpler” than everyone thought, says Catherine Loria, a nutritional epidemiologist at the NIH and co-author of the study. Along with choosing healthful foods, “all you have to do is count your calories.”

The findings could influence public policy through efforts to require more disclosure of calorie counts in prepared food, she says. New York City, for instance, recently required chain eateries to put calorie counts on menus. “For the first time, people are seeing that the muffin they used to have in the morning is 400-plus calories

In the NIH study, participants used a Web-based, self-monitoring tool that tracked how their daily food intake met their calorie goals. Debbie Mayer, of Brockton, Mass., says this helped her stay disciplined. “I’d just see the numbers and say, ‘I can’t eat anymore today.’”

Many times simple is better.   Some time ago, I decided that I did not want to be overweight anymore.  After some reflection, I came up with the method described above, prior to the National Health Institutes’s multi year and multi million dollar  study.  It works - I lost around 40 pounds and five years later have not gained it back.