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Daily Dose: D.C. Wants Food Info on the Menu
Aired July 16, 2003 - 11:42 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Well we are used to seeing nutrition labels on foods at the grocery store. Now a councilman in Washington, D.C. wants some restaurants to reveal the amount fat and calories in their food. Our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has the details in our "Daily Dose." Good morning.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. Daryn, can you imagine going down stairs to the food court we have. You do that probably every day. And you go and you look up and it doesn't just say "hamburger," it says "hamburger 300 calories" right there on the menu board.
Well that's what this legislator in the District of Columbia is proposing. Let's look at some of the specifics. If this law were to pass in the District of Columbia, and that's still a big if, for example, you go to Burger King and you look up at the menu board. It will say "double Whopper, 970 calories." So you know it. The reality faces you right there.
Or for example you go to Taco Bell, it will say "Taco Bell Grilled Stuft Burrito," that really is how they spell it, "730 calories." So it would be right, it would hit you in the face.
Now at table service restaurants, the kind where you sit down, the menus would not just say the calories, it would say calories, saturated and transfat, that's all the bad fat that clogs your arteries, plus the carbohydrate count, plus the sodium. So if this passed, every single menu item would have, or the menu items that are food items, would have all of those counts right on there.
Now of course this is just a proposal. You will notice for the table service items that we did not say a specific item. And that's because when we went to Web sites for some big chain restaurants, the table service ones, they did not have nutritional information on their Web sites. The fast food restaurants are actually way ahead of table restaurants. At least those you can go to the Web site and get the nutritional information.
KAGAN: So what you're saying is, like there would be the price of the food, there would be the other price, the ultimate price...
(CROSSTALK)
COHEN: Absolutely.
KAGAN: But you were making an interesting point when we were talking before you came on that there have been more and more labels, but the more labels there are, the fatter America gets.
COHEN: That's right. And so some say what is the correlation here? The more we tell food manufacturers to put information on their labels about calories and fat what have you, America is still getting fatter and fatter.
Do labels really help? One of the arguments that some people make is that, Look, the labels are not just for the consumers. The labels are actually are fully for the restaurants and the food manufacturers to hopefully change their foods.
In other words, the argument goes like something this -- if food makers have to put the calories and grams of fat and all of that on the labels or menus that would make them reformulate their food because there it would be staring you at the face that hamburger one is fattier than hamburger two. Maybe they would cut down the fat in their burgers.
KAGAN: Kind of like an intervention.
COHEN: Exactly.
KAGAN: You must face up to what you're putting in America's. It will be interesting to track. Elizabeth, thank you for that. We will see you another day for "Daily Dose."
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired July 16, 2003 - 11:42 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Well we are used to seeing nutrition labels on foods at the grocery store. Now a councilman in Washington, D.C. wants some restaurants to reveal the amount fat and calories in their food. Our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has the details in our "Daily Dose." Good morning.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. Daryn, can you imagine going down stairs to the food court we have. You do that probably every day. And you go and you look up and it doesn't just say "hamburger," it says "hamburger 300 calories" right there on the menu board.
Well that's what this legislator in the District of Columbia is proposing. Let's look at some of the specifics. If this law were to pass in the District of Columbia, and that's still a big if, for example, you go to Burger King and you look up at the menu board. It will say "double Whopper, 970 calories." So you know it. The reality faces you right there.
Or for example you go to Taco Bell, it will say "Taco Bell Grilled Stuft Burrito," that really is how they spell it, "730 calories." So it would be right, it would hit you in the face.
Now at table service restaurants, the kind where you sit down, the menus would not just say the calories, it would say calories, saturated and transfat, that's all the bad fat that clogs your arteries, plus the carbohydrate count, plus the sodium. So if this passed, every single menu item would have, or the menu items that are food items, would have all of those counts right on there.
Now of course this is just a proposal. You will notice for the table service items that we did not say a specific item. And that's because when we went to Web sites for some big chain restaurants, the table service ones, they did not have nutritional information on their Web sites. The fast food restaurants are actually way ahead of table restaurants. At least those you can go to the Web site and get the nutritional information.
KAGAN: So what you're saying is, like there would be the price of the food, there would be the other price, the ultimate price...
(CROSSTALK)
COHEN: Absolutely.
KAGAN: But you were making an interesting point when we were talking before you came on that there have been more and more labels, but the more labels there are, the fatter America gets.
COHEN: That's right. And so some say what is the correlation here? The more we tell food manufacturers to put information on their labels about calories and fat what have you, America is still getting fatter and fatter.
Do labels really help? One of the arguments that some people make is that, Look, the labels are not just for the consumers. The labels are actually are fully for the restaurants and the food manufacturers to hopefully change their foods.
In other words, the argument goes like something this -- if food makers have to put the calories and grams of fat and all of that on the labels or menus that would make them reformulate their food because there it would be staring you at the face that hamburger one is fattier than hamburger two. Maybe they would cut down the fat in their burgers.
KAGAN: Kind of like an intervention.
COHEN: Exactly.
KAGAN: You must face up to what you're putting in America's. It will be interesting to track. Elizabeth, thank you for that. We will see you another day for "Daily Dose."
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
