Calorie Counting for Dummies
How many daily calories are needed to stay healthy? In a recent survey, answers ranged from 10 to 10,000. The correct answer: 2,000, depending on your age, sex and fitness.
The Food and Drug Administration has a solution: force food packages to list calories on the front rather than the back of the package. Of course, this is of little value for people who are clueless about calorie counts in the first place. Moreover, a recent study found many of the disclosed calorie counts underestimated actual calories by about 20%.
How about the government sponsoring nutritionists to walk Americans through the aisles of their local grocery stores? How many people are too stupid to turn the package over and read the label?
Furthermore, how many Americans actually care about labels? I submit that those who care about calories are the ones that already know the calorie counts. The rest of us buy what looks good at the time.
Beam me up Scotty. There’s no intelligent life down here.
I believe counting calories (coupled with exercise) is about the only weight-loss regimen that actually works. I don’t believe people are incapable of doing the math — just indifferent.
If people were really concerned, restaurants would compete on menus, with a calorie count that is balanced with taste. Instead, restaurants compete on taste / quantity for the money. Time and time again purveyors of food have found that quantity and taste brings in more revenue than low calorie and healthy.
Instead of educating Americans on how to read a nutrition label, maybe the FDA should hire some Morgenthau boys to forcibly limit the number of calories Americans are allowed to eat.
Obesity like speeding or reckless driving should be reflected in a person’s or family’s insurance premiums in order to promote personal responsibility for lifestyle choices.
What are your thoughts on this product, the ” Weight loss pill for Women”? Slimquick? what do you think?