Tuesday, March 10, 2009

A new law in Seattle

About a month or two ago the city passed a law that requires any establishment that sells food to provide a list of the calories in each item. The theory behind this is that if people know how much fat and calories they are consuming they will make better choices. While there are some that are poo pooing this idea, I am finding this to be working for me. I love Starbuck's hot chocolate and just learned that a grande without whip is 300 calories. I have since switched to non-fat, tall, no whip hot chocolate which is something like 240 cal.

A little over a month ago Jeff and I went to dinner at CPK (California Pizza Kitchen). I went directly to the rest room while Jeff got our table for us. By the time I got to the table Jeff had a sad look on his face. When I asked what was wrong he said that he could never eat there again. (This is one of his favorite places to eat, so this was indeed a sad day for him) I found in his hand a pamphlet that listed all of the calories in the menu. The salad that he usually gets was something like 800 calories. This was shocking! We then went through the menu to find something that would not instantly attach itself to our arteries and found, (after a lot of rationalizing over all of the calories we had burned exercising earlier in the day) that some of their pizzas were relatively low in fat and calories. We made are choices based on that and felt relatively good about them.

There are some who have said that if they are going to a fast food restaurant they aren't worried about the calories and knowing how fattening they are will not dissuade them from eating fries and a burger. I imagine this is probably true for some but I am finding that I am choosing differently because of this new found information. I will admit there are times that I don't care how fattening something is (I bet you can't guess when those times are:))but those are few and far between. For the most part knowing how many calories are in the food I am about to purchase definitely makes me pause and look for another option that would be just as satisfying.

2 comments:

the baker said...

i love that seattle has that law and i wish they did that here--it would make it so much easier to figure out how to eat more healthy at restaurants--good job on finding healthy choices! :)

Jeff said...

I haven't eaten at CPK since that night.