The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

photo credit: jon.nelson

Consumerist turned me to the latest battle in the war on the restaurant industry - making calorie information readily available. San Francisco’s new ordinance requires any restaurant with more than 20 locations to display calorie information on menus or posters, and carries a $500 fine for each violation. This is great news, since bills requiring restaurants to display calorie information, which common sense tells me is a necessary part of treating the obesity epidemic, has historically been fraught with resistance. As the article on Consumerist points out,

San Francisco joins New York City and Washington’s King County in the battle to protect consumers with information, a fight that has not gone well for municipalities. California Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger recently vetoed a bill that would require nutrition labeling throughout the state, and New York City was barred by a judge from enforcing its regulations until April 15, when the plan may be tossed altogether.

The CPSI is serious about this issue. In a press release marking the San Francisco bill, the CPSI outlines their vision of the future:

No one expects to learn the price of your restaurant meal by checking online in advance or by finding out only after you’ve ordered. And at chain restaurants, where menu items are so carefully calibrated and standardized, it would be easy for chains to put calories right on menu boards and even more nutrition information on printed menus.

…It’s hard to imagine that not many years ago, packaged foods in the supermarket did not have to bear the standardized, easy-to-read Nutrition Facts labels. We’re optimistic that twenty years from now, it will be hard to believe that calorie counts were confined to web sites and tray liners, and absent from menus and menu boards.

In order to empower all of us to assist in the fight for what seems like common sense legislation, the CPSI maintains a “Menu Labeling” resource site at http://www.cspinet.org/menulabeling/. Information offered includes a template for requesting menu labeling legislation from your governor, up-to-date news on menu labeling legislation and PDF documents on different related topics. For example, the PDF document on “Myth vs. Reality: Nutrition Labeling at Fast-Food and Other Chain Restaurants” lists and refutes commonly-used responses to requests for calorie information, like the one I received from Disney recently:

Myth: Special orders are common, and it would be impossible for a menu to list nutrition information for all possible different food preparation options and combinations.

Reality: Restaurants only would have to provide nutrition information for standard menu items as “offered for sale.”

• Menu labelling does not apply to customized orders or to daily specials (neither are standard menu items).
• If restaurants can provide nutrition information on websites and brochures, they should be able to put those numbers on menus where people can see them and use them when ordering.

For my part, I’ll be sending an e-mail to my governor and continuing to write about calorie information in restaurants. What about you - would you like to see your municipality or state adopt legislation requiring restaurants to list calorie information in the restaurant?

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Consumerist has a link to GigaOM’s Joost invite page. Let the floodgates open. Surely allowing super-invite tokens like this to hit the web is the last step before Joost opens its doors to the public?

Now, to see what this fuss is all about. Looks like there’s a couple health channels among some other interesting stuff. Wonder why Bridezillas is worldwide except America? Not that I wanted to watch it…

A couple of weeks ago, I figured my 2-day weight gain must have been related to the Chicken Parmigiana I ate for lunch one day. I’m a curious person by nature, and becoming much more interested in knowing the nutrition information for the foods I eat, so I decided to investigate the caloric value for my meal.

I started my search on Olive Garden’s website. Sadly, after drilling through the site map and searching for nutrition information, it appears Olive Garden’s site lists only menu items and descriptions, but no nutrition information. I recalled Consumerist had posted a huge table of restaurants’ nutrition information and checked it to make sure I wasn’t missing it - turns out they came up empty-handed too.

Recalling that Starbucks prints a pamphlet available at stores, I decided to visit my local Olive Garden. I received this one-page, front-and-back pamphlet titled “Garden Fare” that listed only “low fat” menu items:

Surely, a restaurant chain as large as Olive Garden would have more nutrition information available than this paltry disclosure! I called the Guest Relations number listed on the pamphlet (1-800-331-2729) and asked the person who answered the phone if they have more nutrition information available than what’s listed on this pamphlet - no, the Guest Relations person replied. I asked if she had nutrition information available for the Chicken Parmigiana I previously ate - no, she replied, the pamphlet listed all the nutrition information she had available. I wonder what kinds of questions these people are supposed to be able to answer?

Olive Garden breadsticks

So, this pamphlet is all I’ve got to work with. There are some interesting things to glean from it - for instance, the breadsticks that are automatically left at every table is not listed. A glance at calorie-count.com lists the breadsticks with 140 calories per breadstick. Holy crap! Remember that Subway’s 6″ Italian bread loaf has 200 calories, and there’s gotta be at least 3x, if not 4x, the amount of bread in a 6″ loaf. Breadsticks are one of those uncounted calories - they appear, you munch while talking and waiting for the real food. At 140 calories per breadstick, you can’t afford not to count these. Wonder what ingredients are lurking in Olive Garden breadsticks…

Here’s something else that’s interesting - they list Italian dressing, but not the nutrition information. Serving size is listed as 2 fluid ounces, which equals 4 tablespoons. Again turning to calorie-count, I see Olive Garden’s regular dressing is 90 calories per 2 tblsp, or 180 calories per serving. CalorieKing lists Olive Garden’s light dressing at 37 calories per “serving” (I’m assuming this is 2 tblsp), or 74 per serving. Compare this to something like Kraft’s Zesty Italian at 109 calories per 2 tblsp, and Olive Garden’s isn’t that bad. They do define their serving size as twice a normal serving size, but the salads are big enough to share anyway. That is, assuming their serving size of salad is one bowl…

And that Chicken Parmigiana? No nutrition information. The closest I can find is CalorieKing’s listing for Eggplant Parmigiana, which lists a serving at 793 calories. 1 oz of eggplant is 10 calories; 1 oz of chicken is 47 calories. The chicken pieces were definitely larger than my palm, so I’d guess they were roughly 8 oz each - 80 calories of eggplant versus 376 calories of chicken. Substitute chicken for eggplant in CalorieKing’s listing for Eggplant Parmigiana, and you’ve got a meal with 1089 calories - and that may not even include the pasta! Even eating half of my meal, I consumed 220 calories plus the pasta - no wonder I gained weight two days in a row. And to think I used to eat at least two breadsticks, half of a salad, an appetizer and an entire meal - easily 1800 calories in one sitting.

Definitely not conducive to my new healthy lifestyle.

Update - it appears Olive Garden lists the Garden Fare pamphlet on their site at
http://www.olivegarden.com/menus/garden_fare/. How about giving us all your nutritional information, Olive Garden? What do you have to hide?

Part of my daily routine revolves around National Public Radio - This American Life gets me through many days of exercise, and I frequently rely on Morning Edition for news and information I wouldn’t otherwise hear. Both programs use the mixed media radio provides, mixing music, audio tracks from video, recorded sounds etc with the story to provide an almost immersive experience - something that attracts me so much my wife and I try to donate every fund drive. So you can see why, after reading in the Consumerist the RIAA has hiked the Internet radio royalty, I’m pissed. Without reading the actual royalty and what it applies to, I figure probably most podcasts are safe - most seem to feature or use either royalty-free or non-RIAA music. This hike, however, strikes the two things I like best about shows like This American Life - how it uses audio to weave a story, and it’s availability in the form of a podcast.

I have to admit, I’ve been pretty apathetic so far towards the RIAA and it’s practices. No more. I have been practicing researching what I consume - reading food labels, researching ingredients, learning proper portion sizes, controlling my spending. Now, I’ll add another item to that list - stop consuming music distributed by the RIAA.

First, I have to remember the RIAA isn’t an independent organization, it’s a trade group made of recording labels and other members of the recording industry. Most notably, RIAA’s members include EMI, Sony-BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. Here’s a breakdown of just those four members’ shares of world music sales according to Nielsen SoundScan statistics as reported at wikipedia:

• Universal Music Group: 31.71%
• Sony-BMG: 25.61%
• Warner Music Group: 15%
• EMI: 9.55%

Between just those four members, the RIAA represents 82% of the world music market. Smells like collusion to me. Especially when they raise royalty rates charged to radio stations like NPR at the same time they petition judges to reduce the royalty rates given to artists.

How am I going to cut my consumption of RIAA-represented music? Each member of the Big Four labels is actually made of many smaller labels - for instance, Sony-BMG’s labels include Columbia and Epic, and Universal Music Group’s labels include Universal and Geffen. It would be pretty time-consuming to put together a comprehensive list of all the artists represented by the Big Four’s labels. Fortunately, it looks like someone else has done all the grunt work - the RIAA Radar looks like a great tool to research music before buying.

I’m realistic - I realize that in a world where music purchases are still driven by Top-40 type music, my own purchase choices aren’t going to put the Big Four out of business. However, this isn’t about sticking it to the man - it’s about controlling my own consumption based on my own values. Just like I chose to end my consumption of fast food and my consumption of Magic cards (a money drain), I am now choosing to end my own personal consumption of RIAA-backed music - contributing to such a corrupt organization goes against my own personal values.