A few days ago, an article in the Time magazine took me by surprise- “NYC Takes Calorie-Counting Campaign to the Rails”. Its about time the city Health Department started this new campaign to encourage healthy eating habits among its American citizens!! This campaign is intended to build on the city’s new regulation, requiring chain restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus. In the posters that appeared in about 1000 subway cars, people are advised that 2000 calories is all a normal adult needs per day.
During the last 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the United States. Approximately 127 million adults in the U.S. are overweight, 60 million obese, and 9 million severely obese. Obesity is a serious chronic illness, which occurs when the weight exceeds 120% of a person’s median weight for their height. Someone who is 40% overweight is twice as likely to die prematurely as is an average-weight person. Obesity has even been linked to several serious medical conditions including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, asthma and many others.
I think it’s a really good thing that the New York Health Department is trying to make people more aware of what and how much they’re eating. If every restaurant provided calorie counts for their menu items, people would see that, for example a chicken burrito with toppings contains 1170 calories! That is more than half the calories a normal adult should consume in a day. However, everyone has different needs for energy intake and people should definitely not regard this campaign poster as they would a bible. They should just allow themselves to become more aware of how much they are eating every day. Hopefully when fast-food chains provide the calorie information in their restaurants, they will not hide the pamphlets in a corner like McDonald does. If this whole campaign is effective, I really do think that people will start to pay closer attention to the foods they eat, and cut down on their calorie intake in order to lead a healthier and safer life.
1 comments:
I believe that the city Health Departments throughout USA should have promoted awareness of obesity a long time ago since this issue has plagued the US for a long history. Of course I also agree that people should raise awareness on obesity as it causes many fatal diseases killing thousands. However, I believe some factors regarding both the consumers and the restaurants will affect the level of effective promotion of health awareness. This may include the profit incentive for the restaurant owners as some wish to gain larger profit and altering the calorie indication in menus. Examples such as making the number smaller so that customers would not notice the number of calories the food contains would be one of the strategies owners may use. Also, even for some consumers who are educated in healthy diets, many choose the higher calorie food because of the taste. I believe this “delicious” taste of high calorie food is becoming an addiction, which some customers cannot resist. I am not criticizing what that article is promoting, instead I believe that the US should take this matter more seriously because a large percentage of the US population is suffering from overweight or obesity.
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