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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I’m not too hip on multivitamins. Not only do we take on faith what’s in them, we take on faith they’re healthy. My own personal opinion - get your vitamins the way they’re meant to be processed, from food.

There’s a new study out that makes me even more wary of multivitamins. The U.S. News and World Report recently ran an article about a study from the National Cancer Institute that indicates taking more than 7 multivitamin pills a week could increase mens’ risk of “advanced and fatal” prostate cancer:

Researchers followed 295,344 men for five years and found that while high multivitamin use did not correlate with higher rates of localized cancer, it increased the risk of advanced cancer by 30 percent and nearly doubled the risk of fatal prostate cancer. Taking additional beta carotene and zinc supplements increased the risk even more.

…

Goran Bjelakovic, a researcher at the University of Nis in Serbia who has looked at the impact of nutritional supplements and wrote an editorial accompanying the study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, points out that the average American diet provides 120 percent of the beta carotene and vitamins A and C needed, suggesting that additional vitamins could upset the body’s balance of micronutrients.

Wow, the average American gets 120% of the body’s required beta carotene, vitamin A and vitamin C from diet, before even taking the multivitamin? The National Institute of Health has this to say about taking too much vitamin A:

Hypervitaminosis A refers to high storage levels of vitamin A in the body that can lead to toxic symptoms. There are four major adverse effects of hypervitaminosis A: birth defects, liver abnormalities, reduced bone mineral density that may result in osteoporosis (see the previous section), and central nervous system disorders [1,48-49].

Toxic symptoms can also arise after consuming very large amounts of preformed vitamin A over a short period of time. Signs of acute toxicity include nausea and vomiting, headache, dizziness, blurred vision, and muscular uncoordination [1,48-49]. Although hypervitaminosis A can occur when large amounts of liver are regularly consumed, most cases result from taking excess amounts of the nutrient in supplements.

Makes me wonder about the other vitamins and minerals we take “for health” without thinking about the damage we might be doing to ourselves.

Fast food burgers, fast food vitamins, fast food money - before long, we’ll be driving up to McDonalds and purchase hamburgers enriched with E. coli and vitamin A with our credit cards. All we’re missing is the vitamin A.