UK fast food restaurants urged to put calorie-counts on menus

By Cory Doctorow at 10:03 pm Thursday, Jan 15

The British food watchdog is asking fast-food restaurants to add calorie-counts to their menus -- and want to adopt a set of "traffic light" labels that indicate dangerously high levels of salt, fat, sugar (or, presumably, eyeball-gnawing maggots, see post below). Pizza Hut is in.

Men in Britain now get a quarter of their food energy intake outside the home, while women get 21%. A number of chains, including KFC, Starbucks and McDonald's, already offer nutritional information on websites or leaflets, but now the catering industry will be expected to go far further. Officials at the agency hinted that if the calorie counting was a success, the drive for information could see an extension of the traffic light scheme, which applies to food sold in stores for home cooking and consumption. Red labels suggest levels of salt, sugar or fats are too high, amber shows they are at medium level and green at a low level. The calorie counting might also reduce portion sizes.

Food watchdog puts calorie count on the takeaway menu