Big Brother is watching what you eat. A little-noticed regulation in Obamacare that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now finalizing will require restaurant chains and other eating establishments (including vending machines) to inform customers of the calories contained in the food they purchase. The chief motivation is to save money — save the government money, not food businesses. The FDA estimates compliance with this regulation will cost $1 billion a year.
As I have written, cost-wise the Achilles Heel of Obamacare has always been that it has no “pre-existing” medical condition requirement. That is, even if you develop a disease prior to joining Obamacare, that “pre-existing” disease is still covered if you do join — which is a huge incentive to then join because Obamacare must then cover most of the costs to treat the disease. So the government wants to do everything possible to ensure that Obamacare isn’t on the hook for millions of people with weight-related health problems — diabetes, heart disease, colon cancer — because Obamacare is financially unsustainable if there are more sick people taking out of the system than there are healthy people paying in to it. The government’s hope is that, once informed of the calorie-count of the foods they eat, consumers will make healthier choices.
Alas, evidence to refute this hope outweighs the evidence to support it. Studies of a similar menu-labeling law in New York City (passed in 2008) showed that people actually consumed more calories after the law was passed, and they also consumed more calories than a comparative sample population in Newark, which has no labeling law. Also, a Carnegie-Mellon study concluded that, “putting calorie labels on menus really has little or no effect on people’s ordering behavior.” Only a small percentage of the study group ordered food based on calories, rather than on taste and value, and that small minority was overwhelmingly self-described health fanatics.
Another argument used to defend this regulation is that consumers do want to know the calorie-count of the foods they eat, but if that were true, eating establishments, especially restaurants, would already be putting calorie-counts on their menus. The restaurant business is (figuratively) dog-eat-dog. Any advantage that attracts customers would have been instituted long ago. Besides, most consumers eat out because they want to enjoy themselves. Calories are the last thing on their minds.
Bottom-line: This is the “nanny state” at work, and one more example of Ronald Reagan’s point, made long ago, that ultimately we must decide, “Whether we believe in our capacity for self government or whether we … confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital (Washington, D.C.) can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them for ourselves.”
