I'm sorry, but that is fascist bull. I believe every fast food restaurant should have full, consistently updated information upon a customers demand. That however, is a complete waste of money to the company having to foot the bill for the menu update. We know it's bad for us, we have the right to know how bad for us it is, but don't make restaurants the gay guy wearing a rainbow sweater with a built in motion sensor recording that screams "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!"

I don't see the big deal. I go to Shea, oops, Citi Field, and the calorie counts are listed on every item. These Dunkin' Donuts guys who make damned good dough (no pun intended)can afford new signage.

How dare the state of Massachusetts interfere with the free market by enabling consumers to make reasoned and fully informed choices in what they buy!

@mcnerd85: Um, what? I have not read the bill, but I'm 99.99% sure that it does not require a "gay guy wearing a rainbow sweater with a built in motion sensor recording that screams 'We're here, we're queer, get used to it!'"

I think this is a good idea--if you want to make a "healthy choice" when you go to eat fast (or any other) food, it can be nigh impossible without posted info. And how are they going to have it without it being posted? Are you going to ask the pimple-faced kid behind the counter and he's going to dig up a printout from...somewhere? And then you're going to stand at the cash register for 5 minutes deciding on fat/calorie/sugar/sodium tradeoffs while the line of people behind you seethe with anger and secretly wish for your speedy death for holding up the line?

And guess what--if you don't care about making a "healthy choice" you don't have to. You can ignore the information given, you can willfully choose the fattiest thing on the menu--it's up to you. MA isn't telling you what you can or can't eat, they're just telling restaurants that they have to tell you what you are eating. You get to take it from there.

I actually kind of like the idea (and I'm in MA to boot). I've been trying to lose weight for awhile now, but every so often you may be placed in a situation where you HAVE to eat fast food due to no other options. It'd be nice to be able to look at the menu and make "smarter decisions" versus just making judgement calls.

I know I'm being a fatty when I go to fast food restaurants, I don't need an affirmation from the packaging. What happened to personal responsibility?

@mrm514: Making calorie counts available would facilitate personal responsibility. It's not as if every item at Sonic has the same calorie content, for example. A Sonic burger has 150 less calories than the Chicken Club Toaster sandwich. Not all fast food items are equally bad for you, even within a single chain.

However, I'd rather calorie information be made available in all restaurants. Meals in sit-down restaurants are often far more calorie-packed than those in fast food restaurants.

@Wolzard: I agree.. the actual calorie counts of the foods can be quite shocking.. Especially of the foods you consider to be "healthy choices" like the salads or the yogurt..

You'd be suprised how many "healthy choices" are actually really unhealthy choices.

@babyruthless:
The sweatered gay guy thing is a metaphor, from a gay guy who can't stand how 30% of the other gay guys scream for attention. And yes, I do indeed suggest that they have the information posted up to date on a website as well as brochures sitting out on counters, in front of the drive through etc, so they are readily available to the public. As far as your reasoning on you'd be holding up the line....check your own logic, as this will have people telling the drive through clerk 'hold on, I am trying to decide which burger is least likely to come with a lethal dose of sodium. If you have brochures that you may grab once, keep forever, you are more likely to I don't know...reference it carefully and make an informed decision?

In New York, this already exists.

I can understand the personal responsibility comment. It's legitimate. People should take responsibility for what they eat, and make the reasonable assumption that fast food contains lots of calories.

But then again, I find it VERY useful in mitigating bad behavior. It's too easy to pick up a muffin or a latte without making a real analysis of the consequences. I've found the addition of calorie information to be very useful in preventing consumption of unhealthy products, things that I never expected contained as many calories as they do. Just wandering into Starbucks in New York with a visitor shocked her to the point that she won't drink lattes now - it's quite powerful to see it right next to the pricing.

I want to know (a) where Jim Coen is getting his numbers from and (b) how to get in on that signage vendor he's using. No signage company in hell is charging $100,000 for what amounts to a 5' x 6' x 6" aluminum box with four fluorescent lights and a 4.5' x 5.5' x .5mm laminated piece of paper.

I think it's a good idea. Sure you're not going to these places to lose weight but it does make a huge difference in what you choose to "eat bad" with. For example. I live in NYC. Me and my Girlfriend went to eat at Houlihans, knowing full well how ridiculous Houlihans is calorie wise. We were originally gonna go with Nachos but noticed the calories for it was something like 2200. So we decided to go with the stuffed mushrooms. which is around 1200. Still bad for you. But 1000 calories is a huge difference whether you're eating bad or not. Had I not known the calories I would've ordered whatever. It doesn't matter if you don't care about how fattening something is when your eating it. Things like this enable you to make concious, slightly more educated decisions on *how* you plan on eating.

@ADismalScience: I believe we've found our solution to the problem of "the stupids" and their inability to manage their personal finances - put all of the pros, cons, and basic legal info of each financial vehicle on a huge motherf*****g sign in/on any bank, investment org, etc. Also, put all the basic credit card info right on the card itself.

Should at least add to mitigating those bad behaviors, giving us time to improve our educational system.

I actually don't like the idea of having calorie counts right on the menus. Why? Expediency. I hate standing in line for half an hour just to get a damn Big Mac.

I do support having all calorie and nutritional info immediately available to anyone who wants it -- brochures at the doors (outside), at the registers, at the drive-throughs, etc. After 3 years total (with a gap in the middle) dealing with WW online I've gotten pretty decent at guesstimating based on the ingredients, but some things are really not obvious or intuitive. (Example" Having made it to age 26 without setting foot inside a Wendy's, and having only eaten chicken sandwiches at them for some time, I had NO IDEA the burgers came with mayo. Mayo on burgers is decidedly non-standard in the part of the country I'm from, so it didn't occur to me to ask for it left off, and having a pamphlet or brochure to grab would either have changed my order, or changed how I ordered it.)

@mcnerd85:

Really, fascist? I swear every time I hear the word "fascist" and "socialism" I expect everyone around me to scream like its the word of the day. People throw it out so often that it literally means nothing anymore. You know who was fascist, Mousilini, the Italian leader who killed millions. Now compare that to puting health information on fast food, seems a bit rediculous doesnt it? I completely agree that people who eat fast food know they are eating poorly, but we require it on grocery food, drugs, etc why not fast food?

As for the waste of money thing, well the consumers pay for products which fund the company, the consumer elects officials to represent them, those representatives tell the company to put labels on their product for the consumers. Its a big circle, these companies didnt just find millions of dollars that the government is just taking away for no reason, they are doing it for the people they represent.

So why exactly do some resturaunts need to post the data, but others don't? Not ok...

Being from Boston, I've been hearing this talked about a lot on the news the last couple of weeks.

It's an interesting law, and overall I think I'm in favor. One thing the NPR piece I listened pointed out was that it's not really targeting the consumers who go to Dunkin Donuts and buy a donut. It's really about the people who go to Dunky's and think "I'll be healthy today and get a bagel instead of a donut," all the while unsuspecting that the bagel has both more calories and fat than the donut did.

This is important information for consumers, since so many retail foods have additives that add a lot of fat/salt/sugar that you might not be aware of. Yes, I know that my french fries are full of fat. But I was surprised that the chicken sandwich that I thought would be healthier was actually worse.

At first I loved the idea, but the more I think about the more I think it sucks.

I would much rather have an accurate and updated list of ingredients that I can look up, rather than a calorie count. Call me crazy, but I care a lot about what goes in my body, even more than the number of calories it contains. Of course, most people would probably ignore the information, as it contains too may words they don't know (beep beep, red flag right there) or just too many words altogether.

@mrm514: Alright, you're thinking.....they don't like that. Please refrain from using your own mind as others are using theirs so you don't have to.

@Sean Masters:

You mean like card agreements, prospectuses, interest rate increase notices, private placement memoranda, subscription agreements, and the other billion forms of disclosure provided directly to investors and consumers when engaging in financial contracts or purchasing financial products? It's all right there, very straightforward, as simplistically stated as possible. Even for hedge funds! Financials disclose their asses off.

And people still ring up big dollars.

@Jeremy82465:
Facist may be a bit overboard, but the point I am trying to drive across seems to still be lost in translation. Let me try just one more time: Having nutritional information readily available=yay good! Forcing the drive through menu to list every last calorie, gram of fat, sodium info for every item like a scarlet letter=boo bad.

@mcnerd85: IMO, this is an extension of the years-old requirement that the food products you buy at the supermarket have a nutritional label on it. You argue that it's fascist and seem incensed, primarily, at the cost franchisees will have to pay to update their menus. I take the President of the DDIFO's association statement with a grain of salt and a pound of exaggeration. If it costs 1 franchise location hundred's of thousands of dollars to change its signs, then DD needs to re-evaluate who it buys signs from. If he is referring to franchisees who own multiple stores, then I'd be more interested in the cost per store, and a comparison to total revenue.

Let's call a spade a spade here; the real reason restaurants don't want calories listed is because they think (and probably rightly so), that customers will buy smaller meals (lower profits!) as they realize just how many calories are packed into their jumbo-sized combos, and their "healthy choices" salads.

But that statement just doesn't sound sympathetic in a press release, now does it?

@emona: Haha, agreed. If my hamburger has more than a few ingredients it's probably bad for me. I would rather know the meat on my hamburger has only 1 ingredient rather than knowing how many calories it has in it.

@mcnerd85: The gay metaphore had nothing to do with anyone. And heaven forbid people are proud of who they are! Straight people can be, but gay people can't? Please.

@mcnerd85: Why bad? Explain how this bad for the people of America who voted for their representatives who passed this requirement?

So an industry has to change their practices slightly to be compliant with the law? Whats the problem?

@emona: Agreed. Ingredient lists would be awesome, particularly for those of us who have to/choose to avoid certain ingredients altogether..of course, we're probably the least likely to consume fast food, but whatever.

a few months ago I noticed the few Dunkin Donuts I ever happen to walk past just headed off all questions right on the front door with a big sign that says basically: "This food may contain allergens such as milk, wheat, nuts and eggs, but we have no specific information on which ingredients are in which items."

Awesome.

@Wolzard: This is the problem, whether you want to be or not you will get dragged to a fast food restaurant at some point in your life, and because of social pressures you obviously don't want to be the only one not eating anything. You can try your hardest but you can't always prepare meals ahead of time and bring them with you. If the information was there up front you could make a fast decision on what the better item is and not just base it on assumptions which are wrong due to manufacturers labeling just about everything as "healthy".

@mrm514: What? Making the information available does not take away personal responsibility. How do you expect people to make choices if the information isn't easily available? Guessing?

If it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, just tackle that bill onto the customer. I don't see what the problem is.

I think the underlying issue here is MA's fear of MASSIVE (and imminent) public healthcare costs associated with 50% obesity.
All packaged food is required to list nutritional data, and drug companies are required to list known side-effects in commercials and print ads, so this just takes that measure one step further.
Fast food restuarants have had their loophole for 30 years now. It's time to man-up and do the socially responsible thing and tell us what we're eating.
It's a public safety issue. Get used to it or move to Somalia.

@mcnerd85: "Facist may be a bit overboard"

It is also wrong. Fascist is when government and corporations work together against the people. This, on the other hand, is government stepping in to protect the people from the corporations.

It'll cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for 6000 stores to put up identical signs and brochures? Doubt it. And consider that consumers are paying far more than that in the cost of food for the advertising that helps bring them to the fast-food troughs to begin with.

Being a total cynic, I'm imagining signs with microscopic print and not necessarily accurate figures. Who's going to verify that the calorie counts provided are correct? Will there be an enforced penalty if they're not?

I agree with emona that if you're really trying to eat healthfully, relying only on calorie counts just won't cut it. But for those with an eye mostly on their weight--a not-so-small aspect of overall health--it will seem that the system is meeting them halfway. At least we can still get fat, fiber, and carb counts from most of franchise's Web sites. Of course, knowing the ingredients would be helpful, too, so we'd know what kind of chemicals or animal products go into the foods.

But we can all be as selective as we like when we like. We can heed the published numbers or ignore them. Though I try to watch what goes into my mouth, I sure as hell do not want to know what goes into my Dunkin Donuts Boston Kreme, which I'm always quick to gobble up, all 280 fat- carb- and chemical-laden calories of it.

@ADismalScience: I agree, with the issue being that we obviously need to put things in gigantic font on huge laminated, well-lit sheets in order for the point to be made.

@Easton21: That's the problem. This won't tell us what we're eating, just how many calories are in whatever it is we're eating.

Obesity isn't just about fast food. It can't be solved by listing calories for double cheeseburgers and tacos. Knowing what you eat, and learning to make healthy choices: that will solve the issue, not this.

@ADismalScience: It's impossible to TAKE personal responsibility for food choices if you don't have information about the choices you're making.

I'm happy enough with a pamphlet telling me the nutritional info if it's accessible while I'm in line. But I do really prefer places that put the calorie counts (at least) up on the menu board as well. Doesn't have to be huge, just legible.

I think the issue is not one of disclosure but of the government enacting a mandate that someone else has to pay for. This is the same trick the states complain about constantly; when the federal government enacts a new requirement but the payment is required at the state or local level. If the government wants to publish calorie data, that's fine. We can have honest evaluations by government scientists, not something cooked up by the fast food companies. But to require the outlets to publish the data (who pays for the testing and who certifies the testing lab?) and then pay for it themselves is not right. BTW, the $100,000 number probably applies to the total of all outlets in the state.

And while I'm on my soapbox, the state could impose a tax on the fast food franchises (say one cent per item) to cover the cost of providing the data.

i don't understand the insanely long delay before the law takes effect. In a year and a half, how many obese Massachusetts fast food customers will have keeled over? Kudos to the Mass state for protecting future generations though.

Why not simply have print-outs of the menu items nutritional data available if asked? It's not like most of the info isn't available online anyways.

I highly doubt it's going to stop everyone from eating there since it's just calorie counts. Some people, yes, but let's face it, most people going to a fast food place aren't calorie counting.

@emona: I'd like a list of ingredients to be available as well, but calorie counts are not being put up instead of an ingredients list. I think those of us who would like to see ingredients shoudl start pushing for it, just like those who wanted to see the calorie counts pushed for what they wanted.

I don't understand what the controversy is and why people get all whiney when a law that protects the average Joe from big business is enacted. And how can anyone have an issue with having more information available? Also, who the hell reads pamphlets at fast food places? Putting the calories right next to the item allows you to make a fast, informed decision. It won't stop everyone but at least it will make some people realize why they can't loose weight when they're eating the 800 calorie salad. There is no big mystery to the obesity epidemic. Simple science has proven time and again that too many calories in and not enough out= weight gain.

That is probably one of the most appropriate and funny photo to article matches that I have seen.

Ben, have you ever thought of opening up an internet based photo framing shop?

@Etoiles: I agree on both of your points.

They haven't done this in IL yet. If they do it in Chicago, Daley will work it some how so that it is a tax going into his coffers. I live outside of Chicago, fortunately.

If they do pass this here, I will invariably end up in line behind the guy that has to read all of the nutritional information on the menu before making his selection. Put it on a brochure that people can review (hopefully) beforehand.

@emona:

Knowing what you eat, and learning to make healthy choices: that will solve the issue, not this.

True, but this law is intended to help people make those healthy choices. The point is, if you think you're making a healthy(er) choice but aren't how do you know? If I think "I'll order a tuna sandwich instead of the double-bacon-cheddar-heart-attack-burger," in my own kitchen, that's a pretty good choice. Unfortunately in some restaurants it isn't, but how do you know?

@ADismalScience: I've heard that after the calorie-count mandate went into effect in NYC, Starbux made 2% the default milk, rather than whole, because that cut down on the posted calories. You could still get whole milk, upon request (just like you can get skim, soy, or organic) but it made the go-to choice for someone stumbling in off the street (read: my mom, who always just tells me to order "whatever you're having will be fine for me, too") and ordering a latte. It's a nice, subtle change, if you ask me. And if you like to treat yourself to the occasional delicious whole milk latte, be my guest--that's still your choice.

@Pandrogas: I hardly ever eat at fast food places, and rarely have planned to do so in advance--I usually eat at fast food because I'm on a road trip or someone has stolen my lunch out of the office fridge-- so looking things up online isn't really realistic. I guess if you have an iPhone and coverage, you could stand in line and try to decipher the calories while you wait, and I'm sure that would make you lots of friends. I do actually try to figure out calorie counts and whatnot from websites before I go to "sit down" restaurants, because I plan those in advance, and being semi-vegetarian, I also like to figure out if there is anything that I'd like to eat before I show up at the door.

@mcnerd85: You know, there is a simple solution to your problem. DON'T PAY ATTENTION TO THE CALORIE COUNTS.

They're there for people that want to know in a jiffy. No one is tying you to a chair and forcing your eyes open.

Seriously, you deserve an Oscar for your dramatics.

@mrm514: Knowledge AIDES personal responsibility. Lack of knowledge harms it.

See: Abstinence-Only programs.