Just back from seeing the movie “Super-size Me” and it occurred to me that, in an age of limitedless wealth, cheap food, and universal private automobiles, nutrition is best not left to amateurs (i.e., us). Consider the process of going to a restaurant. You, a completely ignorant and probably somewhat fat person, walk in and they hand you a long menu of potential dishes. For each dish the menu lists a tiny fraction of the ingredients but does not fully disclose sauces or overall calories. Even if the content of each item were fully disclosed it wouldn’t do most of us much good because most of us don’t know how many calories are appropriate. Finally there is the problem that everyone gets the same quantity of food. If you’re a 5′-tall woman and order “Chicken surprise” you get the same quantity of food as a 6′-tall man who orders the same dish.
Here’s an idea for a restaurant… You walk in and give them the following information: (1) height, (2) weight, and (3) whether or not you have exercised today. They come back to you with a few choices, e.g., “fish, chicken, steak, or vegetarian?” You choose one of those and finally an appropriately-sized quantity of food shows up on your table. This is, I think, how the $1000/day fat farms operate. But in an age of computerization it doesn’t seem as though it would cost a standard restaurant anything more to operate this way.
Thoughts?
[P.S. I went through a 3-month period in which I ate almost every meal at McDonalds. This was in 1993 while driving to Alaska and back (see Travels with Samantha). I was a graduate student and the 59-cent hamburgers, 99-cent chicken fajitas, and drive-thrus were hard to resist. I was about 30 years old and a tiny bit pudgy when I started the trip. I probably lost at least 5 lbs. during that period. I didn’t order fries or regular (sugar) Coke and I was riding my bike every few days.]
Addendum: It occured to me after posting this that existing menu-based restaurants could adopt this system without chucking out their menu. You tell them what you want plus your height and weight. They then size the portions of your appetizer, entree, and dessert so that the total calorie count is appropriate.
Yup, that’s what I want. Even better if they deliver.
I think the inventory problems would kill the profits. The business of a restaurant is low marginal cost (the cost of serving a new meal is small), you are increasing it a lot by making it less predictable. I don’t think the numbers would add up.
wouldn’t you want to include a system that accounts for varied metabolisms. are there medical tests that can predict the rate of fat/calorie burn per individual?
this is an interesting idea philip, but what about eating for the sake of enjoyment — this leaves no room for fun!
How about we just start with basic disclosure? Here’s a piece of legislation that needs support that would require the disclosure of only 4 basic pieces of nutritional information: http://calorielab.com/bills-meal.html#hr-3444
With a requirement for this kind of disclosure, restaurants would be embarassed into providing smaller portion options. The CSPI tested some burritos from Chipotle Mexican Grill (mostly owned by McDonalds) and found that one of the burritos contained 1,300 calories. Add the chips and soda to that, and you’ve exceeded your daily quota in calories. Chipotle doesn’t disclose nutritional information on their site or via email, by the way; nor do TGI Fridays, Outback, and many others.
Sadly, I think you’d make a lot of money, as more and more people have come to see food in clinical, medicinal terms.
Personally, I avoid McDonalds because I love food, not because I’m hypersensitive about my weight. So your restaurant would thoroughly horrify me, even though I think you’d attract the same sheep who buy into low carb meals today or low fat meals in the 90s or the sugar free fad in the late 70s or the obsession with protien and red meat in the early 1950s, which is what led us to McDonalds in the first place.
I recently noticed that Ruby Tuesday has a new labeling scheme on their menus. Each item is labeled with its Calories/Fat/Carbs/Fiber content. I’d like to see more details on the Fat content, and sodium would be nice too. But, it is a step in the right direction.
What did you do for roughage on that all-McDonald’s diet? Or maybe constipation is useful on roadtrips?
Seriously, though, a friend of mine got scurvy one summer on an all fast-food diet.
While it is doable for fast food restaurant to disclose this information, it would probably be a bit harder for an independent gourmet (or not so gourmet) restaurant where the dishes are created by the chef, change often and vary in size depending on who makes them.
I guess they could use some charts and see how much of which ingredients they put into each dish, bit it would hardly be an exact science.
But some indication would be nice. Any chef worth anything will be able to grade a dish on a scale of 1 to 4 for fat/carbs/cals/salt/etc.
I like getting lots of food at a restaurant. It means I can eat high-quality leftovers for another day or two at home. Order whatever I want, eat as much as I can, and bag the rest.
Going out is a hassle: have to organize driving there, find out who wants to go, where to go, what to order … so I want to maximize the restaurant-quality food I get from each trip.
I think if you started varying the portions, you’d have to present it to consumers with varying prices, as well. And that means you’d either charge more for people like me who eat a lot (which means I won’t go there), or you’d charge less for people who don’t eat much (which means less profit), no?
K and Alfredo have it right: the way most restaurants are structured, they expect to receive a certain amount of revenue per seat. When they deliver a huge amount of food, they can feel justified charging more for the meal thus increasing the profit margin.
Interesting idea, though. I’d bet that someone could figure out how to make it work with the right combination of chef, nutritionist, and geek on the staff. Maybe put the appropriate amount of food on your plate and have the “leftovers” packaged and ready to take home?
How does the restaurant decide what to charge you.
Does someone getting served a larger portion pay the same as someone being served a smaller portion.
Great idea, but it needs fleshing out. I worked in several restaraunts when I was in school (including McDonalds!) and speed of food preparation is essential to success for many. Introducing a ‘portion’ attribute to the process that consumes preparation time, a negative, will have to be offset by some positive, like higher price or brand boosting. I agree that smart choices on the part of restaraunts and the other parts of societies infrastructure are the right way to improve life.
This seems to be making the quantitative/qualitative mistake. Quantitatively, the unflavored tofu may make a perfect meal, but qualitatively? The only way that works qualitatively is if the quality of nutrition is the barometer by which the meal is measured.
How do most people measure the meal? Taste. That’s an emotional decision. You want to fix the American diet? Start with the emotions. Reminds me of the skit where the guy oscillates between salt and sugar. Isn’t that really what McDonald’s is all about?
I always thought that seat rental would be an important cost in cafes/restaurants. Excessively big meals would work against the proprietor by making their customers occupy their seats longer pushing food down.
Gez. You are joking right? I don’t see why every diner should become a medical office. May be the hostess should collect a blood sample from patrons as well? With modern lab equipment it will take no time to find out your cholesterol level… Or would it be easier to make all meals small and lower the price accordingly? Those who eat like pigs will have an opportunity order a double-meal or two different dishes.
So what happens when they give me my portion for a 5.5″ 120 lb. female but I’m still hungry? Will they refuse to give me more because I ate my portion for the day? BTW…I ate Caribou yesterday. And oh my god was it good! (and no, it was not wondering around my Canadian backyard eh). Yum!
Just wanted to share…
If the available choices were “fish, chicken, steak, or vegetarian?” the food would have to be exceedingly bland so that everbody could eat it (why am I thinking of McDonald’s now? 🙂 When I go out to eat, I do so because I want to taste something that I would not make at home. So a restaurant of that kind would not get me as a guest.
Also, knowing how to cook and eat properly is not that hard.
Bas Scheffers: The MEAL Act would not apply to independent restaurants, only to those with 20 or more outlets (whether company- or franchisee-owned).
At any rate, independent restaurants wouldn’t have to pay for complex analyses on foods. The only real important stuff is the kind (solid or liquid at room temperature) and amount of fat (which the chef should know) and perhaps added sodium. Then portion size comes into play, and there are rules of thumb for that (size of your palm, size of a golfball, etc.) that could be posted. You don’t have to worry about vitamin A, etc., unless you eat every meal at the same place, and you don’t have to worry about macronutrient ratios (carb/fat/protein) unless you’re an Atkins cultist.
Ebbe is right: cooking your own food is a simple skill that just takes a little practice, and you lose your desire to eat out so much when you can cook, since you get to the point where you prefer your own cooking.
Not every one eats to live; some of us live to eat! In any case, although it is appropriate to be able to find out what’s in the food you’re paying for, it’s silly to think that all restaurant experiences should be health-centric. We should have the opportunity to choose healthy eating, just as we should have the opportunity to opt for Chinese food or gourmet dining.
No particular kind of cooking is necessarily unhealthy. It is perfectly possible to eat well and healthily at the same time — it just takes more knowledge, thought, and (perhaps) discipline.
Also, there are lots of tricks worth considering. At very good restaurants, we often get around the “huge portions” problem by ordering two appetizers instead of an appetizer and a main course. Order pricey ones if you feel guilty about cheating the restaurant. Don’t feel obliged to eat everything on your plate — we take the rest home if it’s practical. Share a meal. I still haven’t forgotten the dinner at Palm where I and a client split an entire dinner — appetizer, salad, steak, vegetable, and dessert, right down the middle. We told the waiter in advance we were doing that and assured him we’d give him the “right” tip, so he was very cooperative. After all, we weren’t trying to save money — just trying not to eat more than we wanted.
And we’ve been eating out a lot less. There is so much fabulous fresh and prepared (or semi-prepared) food in the US food distribution system nowadays, that it’s a shame not to take advantage of it. And that means I know exactly what’s in my dinner — and how much to cook.
Several years ago, I invested in a startup company that developed and marketed devices (special-purpose handheld computers) for personal health management (such as smoking cessation and diet). The company ran into trouble, and, in a moment of inexcusably poor judgment, I got involved a co-inventor of one of their products. That product did essentially what Philip describes, except it was mainly targeted at meal preparation in the home, because the restaurant problem was (and probably still is) too hard. Our target customers were overweight women 30 to 55 years old, as is true for many weight-loss enterprises.
To make a long story short, there was no market for the device. Perhaps this was poor execution or that it was a DEVICE, and some of our target customers may have been device-phobic. But I think many of the comments above are correct, especially that people don’t want meals to degenerate into being a clinical event.
I chuckle at the thought of the business models of many of the successful weight-loss firms, such as WeightWatchers and Jenny Craig. They enroll fat people in a weight reduction “program” and then they SELL THEM THE FOOD. Certainly there is real money to be made selling food to affluent fat people.
In contrast, there isn’t as much profit opportunity in short-term weight reduction through the only proven methods: low caloric intake and exercise (i.e., willpower and hard work). The literature states that most overweight people eventually regain weight lost in dieting, so no long term “cure” for obesity is at hand. Given the difficulty of the problem and the economic incentives involved in selling food, I suspect that fundamental changes in the American diet are far in the future.
Most restaurants order food in portion-controlled sizes, i.e. pre-cut so they don’t have to do a lot of prep, or hire truly expert chefs. Providing you with just the right amount would be very costly. It would also be pointless: using normal guidelines for diet & exercise, you most likely wouldn’t have an appetizer or a drink – so in addition to higher cost, you’d be grossing less $ because people would eat less.
There’s nothing wrong with people overeating in American or any other society. Darwin will deal with it in due course.
I think this would be cool. I need to lose a ton of weight. I honestly think I’d do it if they could give me something that tasted reasonably good and didn’t leave me starving afterward. I think lean meats, veggies but no fries or sugar — maybe some type of a wrap loaded with broccoli and other veggies, and lean chicken or steak would do it.
Interesting idea. You are trying to engineer restaurants into solving a different problem: “person is hungry and needs to eat appropriately for health”. Most restaurants are engineered to solve a slightly different solution: “person is hungry and cheap and wants a bargain.” Portion sizes (like the supersize phenom) have crept up over the years because people like to eat too much food. It gives them immediate pleasure, even if it causes later pain through disease. Consider the relative success of buffet restaurants. Yes, they kill their customers in the end, but slowly enough that it does not affect their business. Like cigarettes…
I really can’t see this working in the real world. Visit a Chinese food buffet and watch people get the food and the answer will be obvious.
Why do restaurants have menus?
So I can decide between the
Double Roasted Duck with Grilled Figs & Pistachio
and the …
Char-Grilled Beef Tenderloin with Potato Roesti, Bone Marrow & Red Wine Sauce.
When I was a little kid, my mother decided what was appropriate for me to eat. Now I’m a grown up and make my own decisions. I don’t want any restaurant/government to take over the mother role.
The individual should be able to make a meal choice based on their own nutritional/emotional/whatever needs/wants. The occasional excessive (Flourless Chocolate Cake with Baked Fig & Crème Fraiche Ice Cream) dish can be balanced by simple salads at another meal.
Fast food chain outlets sell manufactured products. It is probably reasonable that they provide a ingredient list and nutritional analysis.
But I don’t consider the list of products a menu, nor the establishment a restaurant.
you must be kidding! first of all please consider that the food produced by the US (excluding the exports) is around 2400 cal per person. (for everyone, from little babies to elderly women with construction workers in between). consider what would happen to the food industry if the food remains uneaten. so, the finances of a singular restaurant is a too limited of a vision. therefore, philip, eating those large protions is your patriotic duty!! also, the amount to be eaten at each meal fluctuates wildly and i would never step in a restaurant where such a fascistic practice exists, and someone rations food for me. i can control my portions, thank you very much. lastly, lets stop thinking about meals as medical interventions.
the idea that you go to a restaurant strictly for nutrition is both unspeakably depressing and very American; it is like drinking wine to get drunk.
I’m sure it wouldn’t cost much at all..unless of course you count the cost of restaurants losing all their customers.
If I wanted other people to dictate what I should be eating, I’d drop a couple of decades off my age and move back in with my mother. If I just wanted a random collection of the proper number of calories (even if I added the stipulation of being nutritionally balanced) I could produce that from the contents of my kitchen at a lower cost than will ever be available from a restaurant.
That’s not what we go to restaurants for.
My body and my health are my problem. Disclosure is good…but asking restaurant owners to supercede their customers’ health choices is not.
I’m sure it wouldn’t cost much at all..unless of course you count the cost of restaurants losing all their customers.
If I wanted other people to dictate what I should be eating, I’d drop a couple of decades off my age and move back in with my mother. If I just wanted a random collection of the proper number of calories (even if I added the stipulation of being nutritionally balanced) I could produce that from the contents of my kitchen at a lower cost than will ever be available from a restaurant.
That’s not what we go to restaurants for.
My body and my health are my problem. Disclosure is good…but asking restaurant owners to supercede their customers’ health choices is not.
What every happened to small, medium, and large on a menu?
I now buy by price and photo since they don’t really tell you what you are getting on the menu.
For example, at Carl Jr. their burgers are named Famous Star, Double Star, Super star. and the Six dollar burger. What is the differnce??? The last one (six dollar) I can relate too. On top of this they don’t use the word regular anymore. It’s small, large, and super sized. I guess they use small rather than regular to make you fill inadequate.