On the Side: Counting calories, bucking the chains

From the fourth-floor windows of City Council's stuffy chambers in City Hall last Thursday you could see the battlefield stretching up North Broad Street, from the McDonald's at Arch Street, still packed an hour after noon, to Quiznos beyond, and Dunkin' Donuts, which is not counting the fast-food outlets buried out of sight down in the SEPTA subway concourse.

The hearing in the chamber regarded a bill that, in the broadest sense, would require those franchises to inform customers just how fattening, among other things, their food choices are likely to be.

That would mean putting calorie counts up on the menu board, which would not seem to be asking much.

From the vantage point of the chain-restaurant industry, whose lobbyists and spokesmen were much in evidence, though, this seemed a mission impossible; "unworkable," intoned Patrick Conway.

He is the president of the Pennsylvania Restaurant Association, in from Harrisburg to argue that while he was certainly not in favor of more childhood obesity, he was very much against menu-boarding.

Besides, he testified, lots of restaurants already provide nutritional info - on "kiosks, posters, signs, brochures, tray liners, packaging, customized receipts, and restaurant Web sites."

In other words, everywhere but where it counts. Everywhere but at the time and point of purchase, up there next to the price on the board when you're trying to decide whether to order the Roasted Turkey & Swiss Frescata meal (1,100 calories) at Wendy's.

Providing calorie counts off the menu is like listing the speed limit only on the back of a traffic ticket, quipped Margot Wootan, a public health specialist with the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, who in any case, had come to town by regional rail.

You'd think that you could intuit the number of calories in your food order without resort to a menu board.

But you would be wrong.

Once upon a time, maybe. But things change: The adult serving of burger, fries and Coke that Mickey D's sold back in the '50s is nowadays what they call the kid's meal.

At some spots, the baby back ribs are lower-cal than the chicken tenders. And a crispy chicken sandwich can be higher-cal than the Whopper.

Eat two jelly doughnuts and you're better off calorie-wise than having the bagel with cream cheese.

It's a topsy-turvy world: Fish can be a worse bet than fowl.

Even trained dietitians can't tell what's up.

In one study, they guessed that a dinner-sized hamburger and onion rings weighed in at 865 calories, testified the city's health commissioner Donald Schwartz. The real count was close to

double

that: 1,550.

Ever since standard nutritional labels have been required (and are now expected) on packaged foods, it has been hard to argue that the chains where Americans eat out more shouldn't follow suit.

Their menus are tightly standardized, as a practice. And the bill, even at this early date, would allow leeway - in calories or sodium and other data - of up to 20 percent.

This bill is sponsored by Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown. Similar bills been enacted in San Francisco, Seattle and New York.

And franchises that once resisted any disclosure at all are now pleading for "flexibility" and, at least, a seat at the negotiating table.

When they say "flexibility," they are asking for the ability to more creatively hide the truth.

As for a seat at the negotiating table, Conway thought he had that taken care of up front.

He testified that he understood the bill wasn't coming out of committee yet, the better "to facilitate continued discussion."

But at the end of the hearing - after a Temple obesity expert weighed in, and a proponent from the Food Trust added his two cents, after encouraging words from the American Heart Association, and a poem from the East Park Residents Association - the bill was indeed voted out before the public health committee adjourned.

It will be interesting to see the chain restaurants' reaction at the negotiating table if they are told to look up the contents of any revisions on a kiosk, in a brochure - or on the margins of a convenient tray liner.

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