Time for Students to Count Calories

Following the lead of legislators in New York City, California is poised to enact progressive legislation and require some 17,000 chain restaurants around the state to display calorie information on menus. Of course, those who own and operate chains and those who represent their interests in the California senate will do all they can to prevent the legislation from becoming law because they say that consumers already can count calories and it will add unnecessary costs to restaurateurs -- even though research studies have shown that even trained dieticians underestimate the number of calories contained in restaurant meals. The real reason to oppose such legislation, as we know, is that many in our beloved foodservice and hospitality industry produce fatter and fatter bottom lines at the expense of fatter American bottoms. And since our industry is not smart enough to reign in its greed the government has to do it for us. What a pity, we are smarter than that, or so I once thought.

The simple truth is that it is time to teach each and every student to calculate the calories in every meal and beverage they serve to a customer because caloric disclosure, on the face of the menu and not posted in some obscure location of the building, is coming to a restaurant near you, both chain and independent. Just like the wave of non-smoking legislation that we were too stupid to anticipate (which many ignorantly continue to fight) and forced to change by those same people who we seek to help us earn a living but we refused to listen to until they took on the role of "legislator and voter!"

So when teaching students to cost out and price a recipe we had better start to teach them to calculate the caloric content, too. The future is now and if we have an ethical bone in our body we will not wait for government legislation to force us to do what we should have done all along which is to put the number of calories next to each menu item when a customer sits down to eat at our table. If they choose to ignore the numbers and consume a day's worth of calories at a sitting well at least we did the right thing and let them know it before deciding to do so. It is the ethical thing to do so let's prepare our students to be proactive and anticipate the change that is coming sooner than later, for the sake of a healthy hospitality industry and the American public.