New York To Count The Calories

Do you count your calories or is it all too difficult ? The New York Health Board thinks it is a really good thing. So much so that by April 2008, certain chain restaurants will have to display in a prominent position the calorie information on everything on their menus.

The Health Board is hoping that this new regulation will help customers make healthy choices when they see how many calories they are about to consume. In this way they hope to make a contribution to the growing problem of obesity (latest figures are at a staggering 65%!) and thus reduce the incidence of heart disease and diabetes. They are now gathering comments and there will be a public hearing in January 2008.

But does counting calories really work ? If you are overweight or obese and would like to lose weight, calorie counting is essential as you need to balance your energy in (food) against your energy out (activity level). This is why calorie counting is an effective weight loss method. Diet gurus tell us that calorie counting is very effective, both for the initial weight loss and for keeping the weight off long term. The first step in the process of calorie counting is determining how many calories are appropriate for your personal goals.

Being aware of how many calories you are taking in every day and knowing how and when you are going to burn them up is essential. That means you can eat your favourite foods but through calorie counting, you know your limits and that is important.

Recent surveys show that fast food chains are not displaying calorie information prominently although many do so on their tray liners and so on. People found that the information was not obvious. They also found that a third of the items on a lunch menu contained over 1,000 calories which is half the amount you would normally eat in a day !

The point occurs to me that people may not be so bothered about looking for this calorie information when they are eating out. Well, it seems I am wrong because another survey found that people DO use this information when it is made available to them ,thus helping them to make a healthy choice. They also found that up to 10% of people were making mistakes about their calorie intake (up to 600 !) when they did not have this informaton to hand.

As regards food shopping it seems that people are becoming more aware of what they are buying. It seems that up to 75% will look at the calorie information on the package and that about 50% say that this will determine whether they buy it or not !

The Mediterranean Diet counts its calories too but it much easier as all the foods are healthy in themselves. This diet has been studied for years worldwide by prestigious institutes who are curious to know why people in the Mediterranean areas have a lower incidence of heart disease and diabetes, not to mention that obesity is much less of a problem.

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