Calorie and Nutrition Info on Menus, Good or Bad?

I have to admit, I have mixed feelings about how a lot of restaurants, both sit down and fast food joints, are putting a lot of nutrition information in readily accessible, or impossible to miss places either on their menus or right up on their menu boards for fast food places.  Of course, I’m an American who tends to make healthier choices the majority of the time that I eat.  When I do go on a pig out spree though, I kind of feel like for me personally, ignorance is bliss.

Is this really just reinforcing the fact that nutrition info on menu items is great? After all, I just said that I wouldn’t feel bad or guilty about eating food products that I know darn well I shouldn’t be putting in my mouth if I could “plead ignorance” as to the amount of calories, fat and salt the food contains.  So, by putting this stuff in a can’t miss place, wouldn’t you in essence be forcing people to at least consider what they’re doing to their bodies?

Well, yes, and that’s kind of the whole point of the exercise. And I get that. But do you really think that this is going to make people who aren’t health conscious to begin with care about what they are putting into their bodies? Or are they going to continue to make those poor choices, even when the information is staring them right in the face, quite literally, that they are just making themselves heavier and heavier and more and more unhealthy?

This is a hard subject to debate because it touches on the freedom to choose aspect of our lives as Americans. It sort of goes hand in hand with other government agendas that have to do with our diet, like limiting the amount of salt restaurants can put in their food, or mandating that people who weigh a certain amount go on certain programs for public health insurance (yes, this has been discussed as well).

I’m not sure that I agree with it, but I do understand we need to do something.  After all, we can’t be living as unhealthily as we have been, but people should have freedom of choice to put whatever they want to in their mouth at the moment.