1. I don't think you can blame chain restaurants for people's poor nutritional choices.

2. Please don't ever abbreviate San Francisco as "Frisco" again.

Couldn't be bothered to look up how to spell Schwarzenegger?

@PenguinBlue: The reality of individualism is that when given the freedom to do so, people often make poor decisions, whether its their choice of food or choice of leaders they elect.

Nobody wants to hear that but its 100% true. Thus, I really do not care one bit about the cries people make about losing their precious ability to degenerate themselves or others.

First sentence should read "...but the industry couldn't care less" as in COULD NOT care less. Just a peeve of mine.

I don't think restaurants should have to do this. I mean it is nice, but if you think that the loaded double baked potato slathered in butter and sour cream is healthy, or that your salad, which has chicken and a mayo based dressing is healthy, you are kidding your self. People need common sense.

@smallestmills: thank you for mentioning that. It is a peeve of mine also, because when people say "i could care less" it really inst saying much. I could care less about most things in the world, but the ones I couldn't possible care less about...thats some kind of hatred.

@PenguinBlue:

Your 2 points warmed my heart. You're doing the Lord's work, I say!

Honestly, if you want people to know that you've never been within a day's drive of San Francisco, just refer to it as "Frisco".

Don't anyone DARE tell me my cheesy-poofs covered in chocolate sauce isn't good for me. I want to live in denial.

Yeah, lets just keep blaming fat people for all the nation's problems. Whee.

@xtc46: There is a glut of fast-food product intentionally marketed as a "healthy" "alternative". The fast food industry spends billions marketing these products as exactly that- menu items that are good for you. The majority of customers are no match for this barrage of advertised lies. This bill is all about forcing fast food restaurants to come clean about their fake "healthy" menu items.

Also using "Frisco" means you:

1: Wear a flourescent-colored fanny pack.
2: Have no qualms about shorts and dark-colored polyester socks
3: Are probably wearing Crocs right now.
4: Totally love those Blue-Blockers you picked up at Walgreens.

Carey- are you a recent transplant?

OK. If you don't want to be fattened up like a "gingerbread cash cow" then DON'T EAT CRAPPY FOOD! I have a zillion resources for nutritional information - I don't need a display on the menu in order to know that something dripping with grease or salads with 1/2 cup of salad dressing are going to be bad for me. Let's all wake up!

I'm all for providing nutrition info to help consumers make better decisions about where/what they eat. But making it into law AND requiring restaurants to pay a $350 fee is ridiculous. Nanny laws are gonna kill small business, or cause restaurants to increase their prices.

And yes, please don't use "Frisco" anymore.

Cities DO have the right to regulate businesses located within their borders, you know.

@matto, PenguinBlue: I'm spending the day with someone from out west whose judgment won't be trusted again. It's been changed to San Francisco, unless someone suggests a better alternative.

@LatherRinseRepeat: The regulation applies to chain restaurants with 20+ locations, not small businesses.

@Buran: Yes, but you don't have a problem with this only affecting chain stores? That doesn't strike you as a bit discriminatory?

@Shadowfire: I think its also ludicrous that they're funding the inspector by charging each chain restaurant $350 a year.

@PenguinBlue: San Fran is even worse

And ditto on the "could care less" thing. Really hate that.

Subway out of business? Where? I hate the place, but last time I checked, they are all over the place. Guess Sunday stories don't have to be fact checked!

It's all very patronizing.

Have you seen Burger King's new plans for a Whopper Bar? The thing looks like sex. I'm starving already.

@Dobernala: No, that isn't the reality of individualism. this is what happens when we have a complex society and people presume that certain habits or outcomes are a state of nature. The road to obesity has been littered with craven companies, well meaning food scientists and strange government regulations. In no way does this mean that "individuals make bad choices systematically".

You can't get any more paternalistic than the notion that people are incapable of looking out for their self interest--and by and large you can't get any more wrong. The one thing people are wired to look out for is their self interest. That may result in outcomes that aren't good for society. It may result in outcomes that look paradoxical to us because incentives and signals can be obscured across culture lines. It may, in fact, result in bad outcomes for them when genuine problems exist. But it doesn't mean that people can't come to decisions on their own.

Perhaps what you might mean to say is that a multi-billion dollar industry exists solely to cloud the judgment of those individuals on the subject of food--convince people that packaged is good, frozen is fresh, etc. And that resultant from that glaring distortion you have a populace that consumes too much processed food.

Is that what you meant?

As for the regulation itself....bah. It's not REALLY that onerous, but it certainly isn't a great moment in consumer protection. What is more important than knowing that Big Mac is 1k calories is knowing where it came from and how it is processed. But even then city and state regulation aren't really the answer.

@pmcpa: /sarcasm.

I wonder if any politician will ever have the stones to say "you people are fat because you watch too much television."

All the fat food regulation in the world doesn't solve the problem of people working 10 hour days and then coming home and sitting on the couch watching TV until they go to bed.

@Daniels: I would much rather have a politician that can say that we have a price support system for corn that is pushing out healthier inputs and alternatives in an ENORMOUS amount. I would rather have a politician that can say that we have set inaccurate and unhealthy dietary guidelines for 45 years. I would rather have a politician honestly admit what the impact of 60 years of anti-urban legislation has been on people who drive 2 hous to and from work and sit all day.

Once we get a politician that can talk about all that, we'll find one that can make fun of fat people.

The issues isn't the fully loaded baked potato or a salad drenched in thousand island dressing. It is the hidden fat & corn syrup in restaurant food.

Butter, lard, sugar all are great ways to make something taste better as a short cut to actual skilled cooking. The hidden amounts of these things are much at issue. One of the best chicken soups I have ever had has 10 sticks of butter in a large pot of the soup. The cook let me in on her secret. The stuff is like crack.

Too much of the restaurant food is using these kinds of short cuts to make things "tasty".

@Shadowfire: Perhaps I do, but I also know that if you do business in a location, you MUST obey all laws that apply to your business. It's not optional. They need to stop whining.

Yeah, people should know that the obviously bad food is bad. McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut are all in this category.

But what about the seemingly healthy food that's loaded with hidden calories, fat, sugar, sodium? How does a salad with romaine, tomatoes, cabbage, onions and raisins be healthy when you make it at home but in a restaurant it's suddenly loaded with salt, trans fat and sugar... without dressing? As someone who avoids fast food and tries to make healthy decisions at restaurants, I'd like to know if the salad I think is healthy truly is.

If they've got nothing to hide, why not be forthcoming?

@Carey:
The locals refer to it as "The City"
@bohemian:
Word. My wife and I just started Weight Watchers. It is nearly impossible to eat out and get anything other that a steak. Even a piece of fish can be slathered in butter. For the Weight Watchers plan I need to know calories, fat, and dietary fiber amounts. If restaurants aren't willing to provide that, then fine, I won't take my business there. Ever.

I'm sure this will be effective. Just as effective as this is:

[www.stanford.edu]

People know certain foods are bad for them, even a huge warning on the label won't stop people from slowly killing themselves with crap.

You should really go after the companies that advertise supposedly 'healthy' foods that are actually just as bad as the unhealthy foods.

complete waste of legislative billing hours #9349857394857

@ceejeemcbeegee (star deficient): I agree with your observation but I would add that having nutritional information even for things that are clearly "bad" does help. I watch what I eat and I watch my weight. I used to be obese but now I'm maybe just a bit over where I should be weight-wise.

A popular opinion is that people should just avoid junk food but experience shows that few people can follow that ideal all the time. Once in a while, a pizza is nice. But there's the thing: not all junk food pack the same amount of calories or fat or whatever ingredient you want to check on. And sometimes the differences can be very surprising. If I think I'm going to enjoy two items just the same but one of them has half the calories, then that's what I should have. But if the restaurants are not displaying nutritional information, how can I make an informed choice?

Why is it a bad idea to have food labeling at restaurants? Everything you buy at the supermarket that is packaged food (except alcohol, for the most part) contains nutritional information in the same format. Restaurant food doesn't have this. McDonald's does, but I've noticed they put the information on the bottom of the burger container. Hmm. Which you will see maybe when you throw it away.

@Buran: "Need to stop whining?" I don't see it as "whining," so much as telling the government to go screw themselves. That's how people stand up to laws that they feel are discriminatory, repressive, or unconstitutional - they fight them, in the court of law, and the court of public opinion.

@HawkWolf: It's not a bad idea to have labeling in restaurants. It is a bad idea to regulate such a thing. If the restaurant wants to place the label, they will; if they don't, they won't. Likewise, if you don't like a restaurant's decision to not label their food, -don't-give-them-your-money-.

@HawkWolf: it's just odd to have it right on the menu. and i'm assuming by chains they're not just saying fast food franchises. things like chillis, applebee's, denny's, and a number of "higher end" franchises that do not display any of their nutritional information anywhere a customer might look. you'd have to ask a manager for the book on it.

subway doesn't really display their nutritional information so much as a comparison of their healthiest choices against things like a big mac and a whopper and it's certainly not right on the ordering board. mcdonalds puts their info right on all the packaging but it's also not listed on the items on the overhead menu. anywhere else i haven't been ever or recently enough to recall.

the lack of mom & pop inclusions is kind of stupid though. just because it's only 5 locations instead of 50 doesn't mean it's any healthier or even just less processed.

@Shadowfire: I see it as whining. So do lots of other people, as shown by repeated threads on this issue. Subway proves it's doable by by just doing it, already, instead of finding every excuse under the sun to bitch. And frankly, blindly disobeying the law is not the answer -- that just gets you punished under whatever remedies are outlined under the law. Do you really think you can run a red light and get out of the fine by saying "well, I don't think that law is just, so I'm going to ignore it"? Hardly.

@Buran: Oooh, a car analogy!

Hey, running a red light can get other people killed. Me gorging myself on Big Macs for three meals (or more) a day only gets myself killed.

I think a more appropriate analogy would be "well, the FCC says that NBC should pay them $texas for showing a butt cheek, and NBC disagrees." In which case the response would be "yes, NBC should tell them to go take a leap."

@katylostherart: "the lack of mom & pop inclusions is kind of stupid though. just because it's only 5 locations instead of 50 doesn't mean it's any healthier or even just less processed."

The reason mom and pop places are not required to do it has nothing to do with a presumption that their food is healthier. It has everything to do with recognizing that a) smaller joints do not benefit from the economies of scale that chains benefit from and b) that smaller places often do not streamline their production process like the chains do.

The San Francisco government doesn't have anything better to do with it's time....like dealing with the homeless that litter the streets and the persistent smell of urine in some areas.

I live in the SF Bay Area and can easily take BART to SF if I want to...but I don't. It's dirty, stinks, and having hordes of people begging for money is not something I want to deal with or expose my kids to.

"Each restaurant" paying $350 means that McDonald's (not each franchise) would pay it. Hardly a hardship, especially when they don't simply do so voluntarily.
The salads offered at these places counterintuitively are ladled with insane amounts of sugar, fat and calories. Labeling these sorts of items is what's useful, not the double-bacon-4x-pattied-deep-fried-chili-cheese burgers.
Coincidentally, it's these "healthy" alternatives that the big fast food chains are the least anxious to have to declare.
If you like capitalism, you have to like informed consumers making free choices. Say no to totalitarian communism and embrace reasonable labeling. Yeesh.

@Carey: Hate to break the news to your "West Coast" friend, but they're officially cast out from The Golden State and must move to Minnesota. Hope they like canned fruit!

@Starfury: Please stay in the East Bay. We'll all be happier for it.

$70,000 for a 'half-time inspector'. San Francisco government should spend more time regulating itself and less time over-regulating business. I'm as progressive as they come, but this city's government is just plain useless. They are raising their parking tickets by $10 to make up for budget shortfalls (they currently bring in $85 million a year in parking ticket revenue), yet the head of Parking and Transportation banks $350,000 a year in salary. And transportation is still a mess. Don't think for a second that these calorie counters are going to achieve anything. Gavin Newsom just enjoys making headlines.

@xtc46: If you're against large chain restaurants being required to print ingredients/nutritional info, why aren't you against nutrition labeling on all grocery items in the grocery store? After all, we should all just know how many calories must be in that cheese, frozen dinner, or in those crackers.

And you have to admit it... when you ACTUALLY find out how many calories are in fast food meals... it quite often is shocking and surprising just how MUCH more it is that you ever could have guessed. Some burgers have like 1600 Calories! Some SALADS have around 1200 or 1400! Was that common sense/knowledge?

For me, as a vegetarian, I'd love chain restaurants (if not ALL restaurants) to list ingredients and nurtitional info. At a restaurant, I pretty much just have to take the waiter's word that the sauce or whatever has no chicken broth in it, for example. And I have had them be wrong about this before. (Did you know the alfredo sauce at Macaroni Grill has chicken broth in it? It does. Then again did you know an order of fettucine aldredo from there is probably enough for 3 or 4 dinners, Calorie-wise?)

@Shadowfire: So what if it's a car analogy? What do you have against cars?

The point is, YOU do not get to pick what laws you obey. YOU do not get to pick which laws you can ignore without consequence. Period.

@Sudonum:

Oh, the steaks are slathered in butter, alright. Working at a couple chain restaurants I discovered they all out-butter Paula Dean. The butter is in everything. Dateline type exposes on secret bacteria and hidden semen in our cocktails and Applebee's entrees doesn't surprise me. I'm always shocked by how much BUTTER they manage to work into everything!

calories on the menu would ruin my damn meal. Down with calorie counting. if we're trumpeting awareness, I'd rather have greater exposure to the processes by which we get our food.

PS - no one seems to understand what calories are. They are units of energy. They are a means to diet, not a means to become healthy.

@Sudonum: Locals refer to San Francisco as NYC?

Odd.