But I want to live in denial!

Those donuts look terrible. Ugggggh. At first I thought they were bagels. That glaze is more like a crust.

I ate two of those this morning...but they looked better than that.

But why just the calories and not the fat? That could still be a little misleading. Bacon, for example, doesn't have that many calories, but it's got a whole hell of a lot of fat. It seems like it defeats the purpose if you still have to go get a separate nutrition info flyer thing just to find out something basic like fat grams.

I really do not see the need for this. I do not think anyone is going to say "ohh those calories are way too high". If they knew where they were eating....they should know what kind of food they are going to eat. (dunkin donuts, Krispy, McD, Wendy's etc)

I cannot see anyone even reading these signs.

@LegoMan322: Right, once I've made the bad decision to eat fast food I'm not backing down

@pecan 3.14159265: Well they are terrible. Terribly delicious!

@LegoMan322: I love McD's Sausage McMuffin w/egg (with hash brown & coffee) entirely too much, basing entire road trips around said "meal." (Don't get them any other time.)

And I purposefully, willfully ignore the Nutrition Facts label.

So you may be right.

(However, when my daughter and I go to Subway, we smugly read their napkins and snicker over all of the calories we're saving. So.. there's that.)

@labeled:
As long as you didn't get any cheese or dressing on your sandwich. ;)

Sausage McGriddle > *

@LegoMan322: You'd be surprised. I live in NYC and routinely pick other food options now once I see the calorie counts. It DOES affect you and will hopefully lead to better food options for this country of obese and lazy fucks.

@goodcow: haha...so that was kind of my point but I am glad you said it first. Over weight people are not going to care about the calories and there is more over weight people than anything here. I would bet that most people do not know how many calories you should take in per day.

Wow, so, my typical doughnut fix was about 1360 calories, not counting the two glasses of milk (whole, of course) for dippin' and sippin'.

No wonder I'm a behemoth and have been brow beaten into dieting for the last year by my doc.

@pecan 3.14159265: Which makes Dunkin Donuts' chocolate glazed all that much more delicious!

@Clobberella: Yeah, they really need all of the fat, carb, and sodium listed out, because people on different diets need to know those numbers, not just calories.

I need to watch carbs/sugars because of my health condition, so that's the prime number I look for. Fat and sodium numbers are important to me too, but the sugar number is most important. Calories is meaningless unless I know where they come from.

Maine passed a law similar to this yesterday :).

@LegoMan322: It would actually help me decide between several choices at a given establishment.

I don't eat out often so when I do, I somewhat surrender to the unhealthiness of it as part of the whole treat of being out, but say if I was deciding between two burgers and would be happy with either and could see that one, by virtue of having a particular sauce on it, doubled its sugar and sodium, I'd opt for the one with less. Kind of a lesser of two evils sort of thing.

And having that info on a website somewhere doesn't help me when I'm ordering in the restaurant, so I would appreciate having it easily accessible at the time of ordering.

@LegoMan322: What has fewer calories? A Jr Bacon Cheese burger, a Spicy Chicken Go wrap, or a Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad from Wendys? People just don't know these things. The guy who gets a salad to lose weight instead of the hamburger probably doesn't expect it to have 60% more calories, but it does.

What we can't expect people to do is go to the website, download all the nutritional information, then make informed decisions, but these signs are at least a step in the right direction.

The point is that people have NO idea how many calories they eat, or that their meal contains. This has been demonstrated in numerous studies. People think a sandwich + chips + drink will clock in at 500-700 calories, and it will actually be like 1300. When you're off by a factor of 2, and the discrepancy makes up 1/3 of your recommended caloric intake, some guidelines are needed if people are to have any hope of making healthy decisions.

If you took some overweight guy who decides he wants to lose some weight, he needs SOMETHING to help him start making better decisions and not eat 1000 calorie meals. With menu guidelines, he can shoot for ~700 calories for lunch and dinner instead of being hopelessly clueless in the matter of calories consumed.

I see the need to *not* do this more so than the need to do this. I don't think that businesses need to be hurt anymore than they already are.

I'm interested in this since some of the take-out / fast-food options that at first appear to be healthier sometimes have more fat, calories, or both than other options. The DD Bran Muffin has more than 400 calories, which is more than the chocolate donut here. But bran-anything seems healthier, so people who are trying to watch their diets and pick that end up shooting themselves in the foot.

I think accurate calorie displays could do a lot to counteract marketing or a lot of preconceived ideas about healthy vs. not.

@ludwigk: You make a nice argument but I just don't think that anyone who wants a Caesar salad, or pours ketchup or mayo or butter (yum) that they are going to give a shit about calories.

We all know what food is good and bad for us. And if you do not understand what to eat and what not to eat....I do not see someone looking at the signs and saying...no i should not eat that.

People never read is also another reason why I think this idea is off.

Granted...for a smart person who wants to watch what they do...this is a great idea...for the other people who do not give a shit...this idea does nothing...which is a majority of the people.

But why just the calories and not the fat? That could still be a little misleading. Bacon, for example, doesn't have that many calories, but it's got a whole hell of a lot of fat. It seems like it defeats the purpose if you still have to go get a separate nutrition info flyer thing just to find out something basic like fat grams.

Because you can't fit all of that information on a menu board. It's just not feasible to have that much information on, say, the stanchion at a drive-through, and still have it be legible.

Nice work closing your tags, there.

@LegoMan322: i find that it distracts me from the price which is what I care about...i can afford to gain 5 lbs, i can't afford to spend more than i should

@MichaelBrazell:

I remember seeing a while back a small local chain owner had something like 1 store open over the limit and was required to do nutrition testing on all of his entree's which was ridiculously expensive.

@Clobberella: Alas, that was the compromise. The better bill included fat, sodium, etc. I'm hoping that requiring that the rest of the nutritional information be "immediately available" means that there will be brochures or a list on the wall like what Burger King does.

This is ridiculous. The government should not be responsible for ensuring you eat healthy. You're an adult. You probably have internet access. Look up the nutritional information online. Better yet, use common sense to realize dough, deep fried in oil then glazed in sugar is BAD FOR YOU.

If the states want to do it on an individual level, fine. But our Constitution contains no section about the federal government assisting with your coloric intake.

You're not fat because you don't know the number of calories in that doughnut. You're fat because you consume 2 every day.

/rant

not just the calories and fat but also what KIND of calories and fat... and don't forget they'd need to be posted in 4 or 5 languages as well. by the time its done there'd be room for what, 2 trays of doughnuts in the display case?

@LegoMan322: The point is that we don't know what what food is good and bad for us. Ninety percent of the New Yorkers polled after calorie information started being displayed said they were surprised by the calorie content and that the calorie counts were higher than expected. Take just one of the questions and answers from this CSPI quiz:

3. Which item at Dunkin' Donuts has the fewest number of calories?
The answer is b.

a. Sesame bagel with cream cheese
(570 calories)
b. 2 jelly filled donuts
(420 calories)
c. Banana walnut muffin
(540 calories)
d. A medium (24 oz.) strawberry banana smoothie
(550 calories)

Granted...for a smart person who wants to watch what they do...this is a great idea...for the other people who do not give a shit...this idea does nothing...which is a majority of the people.

@sponica: I am confused......if you are worried about the money..shouldn't you look at the price?

@Alex Chasick: I understand what you are saying..but one other point I am trying to make is..why are you eating at Dunkin Donuts if you are worried about calories? (insert any shitty eatery in place of dunkin).

That is the part that I do not understand. "Hey I need to watch calories and lose some weight....shit I want to go to dunkin donuts!"

I work in New York and know that every deli I go into has no signage at all. You are lucky if they even tell you what they offer you to eat.

I never expect 82% to say that it impacted their decisions. I see so many people order the crap at delis and starbucks and other places, I never thought it would be that high.

@LegoMan322: I live in New York. Since the calories have been posted, I have actually stopped drinking any coffee-drink aside from plain coffee+skim milk. So it's changed my habits.

@LegoMan322: Thing is, it does seem to make a difference to people's habits, whether you think it ought or not.

@pecan 3.14159265: I agree. We'll call the "Dogels", which is something I would definitely not want to eat.

@Alex Chasick:

I think most people would naturally think jelly donuts are the worst item, and assume that a fruit smoothie is better for you.

That may still be true. Just because the donuts have fewer calories doesn't mean that they're better for you. You'd need the rest of the nutritional information to make a decision.

@44 in a Row: Yeah, but the point is that if they are only going to post the calories without any other sort of context it almost seems like they shouldn't bother. Someone who doesn't know a lot about nutrition might look at a plate of pasta with marinara and veggies at 500 calories and a plate of bacon with 100 calories and decide that the bacon is the better choice, even though the bacon has 30 grams of fat and the pasta has 2. I wouldn't think it would be too difficult to add fat grams; like in the picture above, there's plenty of space.

Next, the government will realize how awful all of the fast food is for your health. Then they will decide that they can't allow fast food restaurants to sell anything with more than a set amount of calories/fat/salt etc. in it because the government cares about your health even if you don't.

I wouldn't mind seeing more nutritional information displayed on "normal" foods. We all know donuts are junk food, but people may perceive regular food items for being healthier than they are because they are part of the main meal or because they take for granted that what is put in front of them is one serving. For instance, I was at dinner having a glass of red wine and my dining companion remarked that she didn't drink red wine because it was more fattening than white (reality: 5-10 calories more a glass for non-sweet wines). She then proceeded to dump what was probably 3 or more tablespoons of blue cheese dressing on her salad, obviously not realizing she was consuming most of her daily fat intake (and a good portion of her sodium and saturated fat) on a piddly appetizer salad.

@LegoMan322: That's a fair point, but there's some gray area between being on a strict diet and exercise program to lose weight and not caring what you eat, like just wanting to maintain weight or make as sensible choice as one can in such a place. I, for example, walk by a DD on my way to work, and stop in for a small iced coffee and a frosted donut a couple times a week. At $2 and 230 calories, it's a pretty affordable and not-awful-for-you breakfast. It's certainly better than the chocolate chip muffin (which I also like), which costs more and has much more calories, fat, and sodium.

@PunditGuy: Point taken, although see this post that just went up on fruits and vitamins.

@Clobberella: Because it doesn't matter if the calories from fat are from fat, carbs, protein--it's still the total calories. You can get fat eating completely fat free food items.

@LegoMan322: I always read the nutritional info before ordering at a place. Always. It does matter to me.

@pecan 3.14159265: They look awesome. Donuts are my 13th favorite food.

@Applekid: I tracked my calories for a week (so i only ate foods whose calorie values were available). Even including 2 donuts a day for 6 days (with whole milk ofcourse) I "underate" for 5 days, was in the range for one day, and overate one day. Though I exceeded my fat quota for 2 days.

Makes me wonder... how many donuts do you eat???

@Alex Chasick: Exactly. Eating a healthy diet is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It's about balance. You can eat plenty of "terrible" food as long as it's not the majority of your intake. In that sense, there are many people who may enter a purveyor of junk food and still care about how many calories a particular offering contains.

@MostlyHarmless: None now. Used to grab a dozen for around the house which would last through a week's worth of cravings.

And with a clear predilection towards overeating, I'm unlikely to ever buy more than one at a time ever again if I expect not to regain what I've lost and move back into that "lol-sit-around-the-house-SIT-AROUND-THE-HOUSE" obese category I just got out of, according to my BMI index.

Yeah, but the point is that if they are only going to post the calories without any other sort of context it almost seems like they shouldn't bother. Someone who doesn't know a lot about nutrition might look at a plate of pasta with marinara and veggies at 500 calories and a plate of bacon with 100 calories and decide that the bacon is the better choice, even though the bacon has 30 grams of fat and the pasta has 2. I wouldn't think it would be too difficult to add fat grams; like in the picture above, there's plenty of space.

Agreed in theory, but the problem is that once you add fat, it wouldn't be too difficult to also add saturated fat, and then why not add carbs, and why not break it down into sugar and other carbs, etc., etc. They do need to just pick something and stick with it, and that's why you make all the other information available at the point of sale on a poster or brochure.

The Cadbury Fruit & Nut bar sitting beside me has the calorie information per serving along with the calorie information for the entire bar. I've still consumed 3/4 of it already and plan to finish the rest in a few minutes.

@LegoMan322: This is already in place in NY, and it definitely affects people's decisions. Sure, you might be in D&D because you need breakfast, but for many people they scale back what they get at restaurants. I appreciate it, because you realize some things are insane, like an appetizer at your favorite restaurant being 1,000+ calories and you never knew before. That's just gross.

It's cute how everyone keeps referring to obese people as lazy and dumb. Like because if you weren't stupid you wouldn't be fat, amirite?

There are a lot more factors that are part of being overweight. It's not just about laziness or ignorance of fat/calorie content. But keep on raging against the fat machine! That'll show those fat people that are fat!

do not need calorie content on my doughnuts. I know it's bad and frankly I don't want to know HOW bad.