On the Side: Nutrition info? Yes, we will eat it all up

'Good grief!" huffed an e-mail I got after applauding a City Council bill that would make chain restaurants post calorie counts on their menu boards: "Is there anything that government doesn't want to get its grubby hands on?"

The note went on cheerily, theorizing that I'd probably had my fill of Big Macs (Guilty! Although isn't there a statute of limitations?); that the McLean was a flop; and that it's a no-brainer that, yes, fast food is full of calories and fat.

Its conclusion: Hands off, Big Brother! "Let people be responsible for themselves."

If I were grading the thing, I'd give it an A for libertarian boilerplate, a B-plus for plain speaking, and a big, fat D for logic.

Why the D? Well, for starters, since when is it liberating

not

to know what's in what you're eating? (Have you heard moms griping about nutritional labels? No. They swear by them.)

In fact, the goal of the bill, introduced by Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, is to give people one more way to be responsible for themselves.

To equip them with information, as it were.

Without a little information, how are they likely to figure that a tuna melt at Cosi is 1,012 calories (and 60 grams of fat), or that one Auntie Anne's pretzel has twice the calories of another depending on what sauce you dip it in?

Don't take it from me. In a lawsuit by the chains against a similar rule imposed by New York's board of health last week, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Holwell took note of the fact that diners watching their weight were routinely baffled by the caloric content of restaurant meals: They estimate that they're a lot less fattening than they really are.

Holwell said a lot of other things in upholding the rule. He acknowledged the obesity epidemic. He agreed that 56 percent of New Yorkers are overweight, and vulnerable to the health problems that entails.

He accepted that about a third of all calories consumed these days are in restaurant settings, but that customers rarely register nutrient information posted on tray liners and fliers and Web sites.

Foods are no longer what you may think they are, especially fast foods. When the first McNuggets were analyzed by a researcher at Harvard Medical School, Eric Schlosser's

Fast Food Nation

notes, they revealed a "fatty acid profile" more like beef than poultry.

Later, in dismissing a 2003 lawsuit by obese teenagers in New York, a different federal judge nonetheless found that McDonald's had made it virtually impossible to decode what

chicken

meant: "Rather than being merely chicken fried in a pan," he said in a ruling recounted in

The Omnivore's Dilemma

, "[McNuggets] are a McFrankenstein creation of various elements not utilized by the home cook."

Even simpler items are hard to peg. An Egg McMuffin? It's half the calories (300) of the McDonald's hotcakes meal (610).

Then there's the bait-and-switch thing. Quizno's recently put out a balsamic chicken "sammie," proudly touted at 200 calories. Ask for one, though, as I did the other day, and you'll be asked a bit incredulously if you don't really want two.

Same for Au Bon Pain's new "Portions" menu of small plates - hummus and cucumber- chickpea-tomato salad, Thai peanut chicken and snow peas, and so on - that are offered as "small, healthy helpings [of] 200 calories or less."

True. But not the whole truth: The menu invites you to combine two or three "Portions," or add a plate to a soup or salad - or something.

So the chains are already testing a way to have their cake and eat it, too: If they're going to have to un-supersize, nothing says they can't suggest you eat twice as many of the smaller portions.

But let's face it. They're responsible for selling more food.

You're the one responsible for yourself.

The only one who can tell the chains, in the end, to get their grubby hands off.

.