STOP THE CALORIE KILLJOYS...
A calorie count on menus is a crude, Nanny-State, box-ticking exercise that absolves our TDs of their responsibilities. I have a much better idea...
IT’S January, everybody is on a health kick and now is the perfect time to try and slip in some new legalisation – calorie counting on menus... ugh.
My thoughts as a restaurant owner and avid eater of everything are, firstly, calorie counting is a very crude way of determining whether something is healthy or not, and unless you’re getting your food produced on a factory scale, then it’s impossible to get an accurate calorie count on home-made, natural food made by chefs using what’s good from the markets on a particular day.
Calories are not equal and – this is key – they should only be used as part of a larger national effort of food education.
Why don’t we focus on giving our children healthy school lunches, instead of queuing up daily at deli counters for jambons and chicken fillet rolls, and on supplying our hospitals with quality food rather than the atrocious muck being slapped onto plates in wards?
Surely, if there is anywhere that good food should be an absolute given, it’s places where we are nurturing young brains or sick people back to health?
Calorie-counting menus are just a box-ticking exercise that places the burden on restaurants instead of placing food education at the feet of the Government, its an easy out for them.
Most children these days have no idea where their food comes from, what’s in it, how it was reared, is it local? Everything is so far removed from the reality. We need to educate about the importance of great food, Irish Food, natural food. Calorie counting isn’t going to reinforce any of that, its just going to become another number with no real link to what we are eating. We should be focusing on eating the right types of food, and calorie counting is a small part of that.
WHO cares what the calorie count is in a lovely warm bowl of home-made stew. Does the number of calories supersede the fact that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a good stew? Of course not.
Adults shouldn’t need to be told that having chips every day is bad, or buttering a doorstep of crusty bread every day isn’t ideal.
It should be taught to us from a young age. We should shift the focus on getting more and more people to cook at home, eating more fresh products, less convenient foods instead of focusing on the numbers.
Do people really want to know the number of calories in what they’re having on a treat night out, when it’s a time to relax after a long week in work, or on a special occasion where you want to push the boat out?
Do you want a calorie count staring you in the face as you happily decide to share a dessert or a sneaky cheeseboard when in good spirits?
We can diet and calorie count at our own will at home if we want to do so, it shouldn’t be inflicted on everybody.
In the restaurant, we get inundated with reps from food suppliers offering pre-made convenience foods almost daily, food that is pre-cooked weeks previously in vacuum bags, that just needs five minutes getting nuked in the microwave, and is often way cheaper than we could produce using natural, local ingredients. Along with that we have staff shortages and administration costs piling up, so it could be very tempting to fall into the trap of serving convenience food tricked up to look natural. But who suffers? You, the customers.
Now imagine how alluring using these pre-made products might be to restaurant owners if there was a hefty fine hanging over their head because they didn’t correctly label a lovely new special chef has passionately created that day. Would you be tempted? It already takes huge resolve to stick to our guns in Michael’s, in Dublin’s Mount Merrion, serving natural, home-made food.
We’re already battling against soulless chains, who seem to hoover up our customers at will, and we could easily give into the factory ‘boil in the bag’ offerings, where chefs heat and serve food, often with no nutritional value left in it after all of the processing in various factories around the world on an industrial scale.
Of course, we need some form of healthy eating education, but surely a better use of public funds and time would be to educate children at grassroots level? We need home economics classes in our schools, teaching nutritional value, which fats are good, which are bad and which do we need?
And the importance of exercising and moderation.
Calories on menus is just a way of passing the hard work off on restaurants instead of putting together a national education infrastructure. And sure, there are things that can be done to inform people. But what good is it if it can’t be done accurately?
MAYBE there are other ways? A broad strokes traffic light system for smaller places, and a more rigid structure for the larger chains, say chains with ten-plus locations.
The last thing we need now is more chefs and restaurants taking the easy route of never changing specials, using convenience food, going bust or quitting due to the pressure of administration and being replaced by yet another chain. We’re better than this, Irish produce is too good for this.
This seems like another Nanny State box-ticking exercise by the Government with no real thought on genuine implementation, the realities of the costs and time of getting it accurate, and the burden it will place on smaller independent restaurants and cafés that are already swamped in regulations, legislation, VAT increases and the ever-soaring insurance costs. And now this? Thrown at us in what will be the toughest month of the year.
While January is usually the time for resolutions and new healthier beginnings to the year, this will possibly be a short-sighted move, which instead will lead to less healthy eating and the stifling of creativity in our restaurants producing seasonal, local and home-made foods.
It will be wide open for guesswork, or downright lies when it comes to labelling – we can already see the lack of transparency with supermarket labelling.
How will it be policed? What’s the margin for error? What punishment will there be? Will small independents be treated the same as huge multinational chains? What’s the point if it can’t be done accurately?
I’m watching this with a very keen eye and will be resisting it.
Maybe when we see action in our hospital wards and better education for our schoolchildren I might reconsider. But until then, this isn’t the fight the Government should be fighting, there are more pressing matters and they should start at grassroots.
The horse has bolted, let’s focus on re-educating the next generation and giving them a base level and knowledge of healthy eating.