No doubt about it, the next big legislative front for food activists is going to be menu labeling legislation — that is, laws requiring restaurants to post a variety of nutritional information for every item they serve. Fortunately, there are some freedom-minded folks out there speaking up for the right not to be served a side of guilt every time they go out to eat. Today’s heroes are the editors of the Seattle Times, who blasted a local menu labeling ordinance with equal parts outrage and practical reasoning:
Suppose you go to Anthony’s Home Port and order "Dungeness Crab Cakes Benedict." The text below it says, "Two of our award-winning Dungeness crab cakes topped with poached eggs on a bed of sautéed spinach with hollandaise sauce." Do you really want to read immediately afterward how many calories this contains? How many milligrams of salt? …
Anthony’s circulated a menu with these measurements added. It was twice as big as its current one and about one-twentieth as appetizing …
The menu rule overreaches … Putting [calorie counts] on the menu in large type reeks of nannyism. Crab cakes are not cigarettes.
And an editorial in Tuesday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch included some not-so-subtle jabs at pseudo-scientists bent on convincing people that obesity spreads from person to person like a contagion:
The coming weeks surely will see scientific surveys that make similarly surprising discoveries, such as: bowlers go bowling with other bowlers [and] vegans graze with other vegans.
