Archives for the 'new york city' tag
New Study: Menu-Labeling Laws Make People Eat More Calories
From today’s NYT (emphasis mine):
A study of New York City’s pioneering law on posting calories in restaurant chains suggests that when it comes to deciding what to order, people’s stomachs are more powerful than their brains.
April Matos, 24, bought a Happy Meal at a McDonald’s for her 3-year-old son, Amari, and a Snack Wrap for herself. “Life is short,” she said. “I started eating everything now I’m pregnant.”
The study, by several professors at New York University and Yale, tracked customers at four fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken — in poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.
It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.
But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.
All this makes the stand of the upscale (and very good) Houston’s chain against New York City’s menu-labeling requirements all the more excellent.
More from the NYT here. When I interviewed the fantastic Brian Wansink, a professor, author, and former USDA official, for Reason.com earlier this year, he noted that menu-labeling laws and other such meddling have
“…either been ineffective or disturbingly counterproductive,” he says. “All the data we’ve seen about menu labeling doesn’t show a consistent answer at all.
“Trying to change capitalism is a lot of work,” he adds, “and it won’t work.”
Indeed it won’t. Hear that, Ezra? Hear that, Mr. Brownell?
NYT Lets You Take a Spin (Literally) in the Peter Luger Meat Locker
What’s it feel like to stand in the middle of several tons of aging meat bliss? Click on the steaks to take a spin. Related NYT article here. Peter Luger’s story here.
Bottled NYC tap water not at all a gimmick, all about local and green and stuff
Entrepreneur Craig Zucker is bottling and selling NYC tap water. Now that’s some chutzpah.
On the one hand, the fact is tap water is generally safe and delicious. I don’t understand buying the stuff except when you’re out and about and what you’re really buying is the convenience. On the other hand, I’m not crazy about Zucker’s enviro-nationalist-adbusterese “manifesto” on the Tap’dNY site. In part it reads:
Year after year, bottled water companies have told us that their water was somehow healthier or better for us than our own water. They spent billions of dollars on marketing to make us believe that we needed exotic water, in sleek packaging, from far away Arctic glaciers, tropical islands, and European volcanoes.
We fell for the fancy marketing gimmicks, too, and the brands we drank started to become status symbols.
Totally, because bottling tap water is not a gimmick, and there’s no way people would ever take politically correct water and use it as a status symbol.
Other copy on the site talks about the “miles saved” by not having to ship in the water from abroad, and that the local water requires “little energy to produce.” The site’s ordering page explains, “We do not deliver to Fiji or France—they can keep their water and we’ll keep ours.”
It’s curious that although the water is all local, it costs at least as much as the French variety. A 20 oz bottle of Tap’dNY costs $1.50, or 7.5¢ an ounce. Looking at Peapod, Evian is going for as little as .047¢ an ounce when you buy the liter bottle. I’m all for local—even if it’s more expensive—when it’s about quality and taste. But if it’s not about taste or quality (and certainly not about falling for marketing gimmicks), then Tap’dNY water makes as much sense as paying twice as much for an iPod because it was assembled in the Bronx.
Duckathlon Recap II: New at Reason.tv
Duckathlon Recap: New at Reason Online
I have a piece up at Reason Online today on D’Artagnan’s great Duckathlon, and how it fits in with–and counteracts–the rise of the food nanny state in New York City. A snippet:
So while the city has hundreds of outstanding restaurants, each likely claiming thousands of devoted customers, it also has millions of residents who can’t afford (or be bothered) to eat in them. Those people instead frequent the inexpensive chain restaurants city regulators target.
New York City might be foodie heaven, but if you’re an eater rather than a gastronome, regulators are increasingly futzing with your food. The food really under fire in New York City right now is not that eaten by, for example, billionaire Michael Bloomberg—whose mayoral manse chefs competed at the Duckathlon—but by everyday diners.
Still, the vigilance of [D'Artagnan's Ariane] Daguin, her staff, and Duckathlon participants is as important as it is admirable.
“In a small little way,” Daguin says, “I hope it’s paving the way to more freedom.”
Crispy previously on the Duckathlon here. D’Artagnan’s Flickr photostream from the event here.
NYT Makes All Your Sandwishes Come True
Where to find the best sandwich in NYC? The NYT has you covered like… like… like bread around PB&J.
The ground rules: A sandwich had to be composed as such; mere food on bread did not count. (This left out, for example, pan de lomo saltado, a popular Peruvian stir-fry of beef, onions and peppers laced with soy sauce, typically served with French fries, but piled onto a crusty roll for sandwich purposes.)
Burgers and wraps were out of the running, as was the universe of empanadas, samosas, patties and arepas; the same went for any sandwich that had to be eaten inside a restaurant or was otherwise unavailable for travel to a picnic, a ballgame or a playground.
The winners? Find out for yourself, but be warned that a great New York sandwich need not be from New York (city or state).
Well-Financed Food Foes Bankroll NYC’s Shamtastic ‘Responsible Restaurant Act’
When a proposed law is so far afield that even New York City’s notorious, all-powerful Department of Public Health & Mental Hygiene finds it screwy, you know the bill’s backers are a prize and some peanuts short of a box of Cracker Jacks. Such is the case with the Responsible Restaurant Act, which would make city health officials responsible for settling labor disputes.
“Studies have shown, restaurants that are in violation of these employment laws, do have health issues involved,” said Responsible Restaurant Act supporter Joy Carlos. “So not only are the employees involved in this, but you as the customer is affected, as well”.
“So many workers are forced to work when they are sick, while preparing and serving food to the public,” said Cecilia, a restaurant worker who only gave her first name.
Opponents say the bill is vague and call it a direct attack on any establishment that holds a health department license, like cafeterias, hotels and night clubs.
This is why we find the city health department on the side of good this time–opposing the measure alongside the state restaurant association. Thankfully.
The RRA effort is bankrolled by a group known as the Brennan Center Strategic Fund, which is no doubt made up of concerned restaurant employees. April Fool’s! The RRA is real, but proponents consist of well-heeled lobbyists and a collection of poor, downtrodden folks at NYU law school. NYU, incidentally, is also home to tiresome food cop Marion Nestle.
Restaurant Alleged to Have Taped Tom Brady, Other Celebs
Phillippe, an Upper East Side Chinese restaurant in NYC, apparently has been secretly videotaping diners in a purportedly private dining room, reports the NY Post.
[E]mployees at the Chinese eatery have screened the videos after the stars leave, says an insider. “They’ve watched tape of Diddy and Sienna Miller hanging out and Tom Brady and Gisele [Bundchen] hooking up. They get a kick out of it, they laugh and comment on people,” said our source….”
Ouch. More here. While a spokesman says the taping takes place for security reasons — got to keep the wines in the back room safe! — denies the tapes are even kept on site, and says no staff has access to them, it should go without saying that allegations like these won’t fill up tables.
Phillippe has a video segment at its website that allows you to meet the owners in the same wine room — and watch a few non-celeb diners eat.
Any NFL fan knows this is not Tom Brady’s first appearance in a videotape scandal, what with the New England Patriots taping brouhaha last year, which The Onion brilliantly parodied with the photo above.
NYC: Where the Menu Police Never Sleep
New York City is again attempting to unconstitutionally require some chain restaurants to post calorie information for all foods in GIANT TYPE alongside food listed on menus.
Chuck Hunt of the New York Restaurant Association summed up the new regulation, calling it “cumbersome” and noting “it really isn’t going to work.”
Self-important city health commissioner Dr. Thomas R. Frieden says chain restaurants — most of which already voluntarily provide such information on company websites an in smaller restaurant displays or handouts — deserve to be treated badly by the city because their “business model depends on keeping information from [their] consumers”. Right. Because the medical profession — doctors generally, government doctors even more so, and New York City public health doctors especially (recall this last group was responsible for imprisoning Mary Mallon on a city island without any sort of due process) — are known for their openness.
All this doesn’t mean New York is done spiterzing fitzing futzing with restaurant menus. Not one bit. As the NYT’s Jennifer 8 Lee (note: “8″, not “B.”) notes, the state is also set to crack down on evildoing New Yorkers who hand out menus, employing “pentalingual” sings that seem to show a brick with an arrow on it crushing a four-fingered humanesque hand.
This law would seem to raise many of the same First Amendment issues as does the calorie requirement regulation. But instead of fighting back in the courts, it might be best from a legal perspective for restaurants in New York to simply post no menus at all — at least until the city and state change these stupid laws. With no menus to display or hand out, they’d probably be exempt from the calorie requirements, and certainly not running afoul of the menu police.
