Linda Kennedy
It’s a mystery to me why no one has come up with Feedbit. It would be like Fitbit but, instead of counting steps taken and calories burned, it’d assess calories consumed. Surely there is a measurable relationship between pulse rate, heart rate and digestion, which a tech bracelet could audit?
This, in turn, would enable calorie information to be made techy and therefore cool. It would be called ‘Feedbit connectivity’ and, when the word ‘connectivity’ is attached to anything, there is no more scoffing from men. If women count calories, that’s silly vanity. If men scan and update their Feedbit connectivity – different thing entirely. Course it is. It’s shiny and manly.
There is sector waiting to developed, VCs; call it it nutri-tech, or perhaps tummy tech.
The reason I mention all this is the splendid idea by Britain to consider asking restaurants and cafes to provide calorie labelling, extending the requirement that’s currently only made of food bought in shops. kJ and kcal would have to be on menus, meaning one could preserve kJ funds for a night out.
This plan has led to ample hubbub by equally ample politicians spluttering a question: ‘why would one POSSIBLY want to go to a restaurant and know the calories?’. Prepare for a legislative loophole allowing London’s gentlemen’s clubs to opt out.
Other classes, eating-wise, already have this calorie information to an extent. McDonald’s nutrional counts are available. So are the counts of chains like Pizza Express.
But beyond that, it’s a game of chance. Having lunch in a gastro pub? How damaging is the truffle oil glaze on those sweet potato fries? In a hipster café? Horror, you are at artisanal sea: is vegan cheese more or less fattening than its dairy doppelganger? And as for an accompanying beverage, well, one doesn’t want to end up with a craft beer belly. Oh please come soon, calories chalked onto the handwritten board of daily specials.
Calorie labelling on restaurant menus would be the end of a long journey which started, for me, with the scorn of fellow delis.
It was a joy when calories were at last displayed clearly on the front of British packaging, ceasing the requirement for an embarrassing stoop over the chill cabinet doing the ‘fat gram twist’. This was not a grocery groove where shoppers partnered their trolleys; it was the business of finding which dish offered the best trade-off between flavour and fat grams. And I dreaded it. I loathed the looks of scorn on faces of fellow delis as I twisted each carton to assess nutritional details.
Despite contempt, the twist had to be undertaken. Otherwise one might mistakenly buy fresh pasta in a sauce of honey with butterbean rather than, say, the leaner taste team of tomato and curly kale thereby quintupling one’s fat gram intake because of ingredients insidiously weighing down the former but missing from the light-option latter. Without a guiding paragraph on the packet, who but the most specialised nutritionist could be aware of the strike capacity of every relish, root and pickle to inflict damage to the figure?
Back to the present day, where weighty change is in the air. What could be altered by having calories marked on restaurant and café menus?
Requests might cease for salad dressing on the side. Happy waiting staff – fewer items to carry.
Michelin stars would likely matter less. The calorie-aware might seek a new culinary calibration. Chins? A one-chin restaurant would be low-cal. Three-chins would be a big budget night out.
Meantime, I’m considering crowd-funding Feedbit. Slogan: ‘No More Tummy Tucks with Tummy Tech.
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