Don’t Worry About Calories; Worry About Everything Else
The Overlooked Ways Food Affects Your Health
Earlier today I found myself eating at Chipotle, and I was struck by something on the menu board behind the counter. The calorie range for each item.
I’ve never been overweight — therefore I’ve never really cared about counting calories. I could eat Big Macs and milkshakes every day for lunch for a week and would not see much physical change.
Blessed be thy metabolism.
For many people, however, monitoring caloric intake is a legitimate concern.
If Johnny McBurger needs to grab something quickly to eat from a fast-food restaurant, then it may be nice to know calorie amounts.
At the same time, restaurants themselves likely don’t want to be held libel for angry customers who eat lots of their food and subsequently gain weight.
In fact, the FDA presently requires restaurants with 20+ locations to meet a menu labeling requirement. I’m not totally familiar with the law created for this, but I’d imagine it’s a matter of restaurants being more transparent about what they sell to patrons…and thus avoiding lawsuits.
In spite of this though, studies have shown that calorie labeling doesn’t exactly help.
“The success of such a calorie-labeling campaign, however, requires that target consumers simultaneously see the calorie labels, are motivated to eat healthfully, and understand how many calories they should be eating,” said Andrew Breck.
You have to care about calories — be ‘motivated to eat healthfully’ — for the calorie labels to matter.
And I don’t care about calories.
Again, I’m on the skinnier side. When it comes to eating at restaurants — mostly fast or fast-casual ones — I want to know everything else about the food.
How much sodium is in it? How much sugar?
Where are the ingredients from? Are they fresh? Are they low or high quality?
Are there preservatives or other chemicals? Artificial flavoring?
This is the type of transparency I desire.
After I finished eating my Chipotle meal, I felt some of the symptoms you might expect after consuming fast Mexican-American food.
My tummy was doing summersaults. I felt a bit tired. And I was thirsty.
Not of that has anything to do with caloric intake.
That’s simply the ripple of ingredients — steak and rice and tortilla and cheese and lettuce and corn, none of which I could tell you where it came from or how it was handled.
Calorie counts and ranges are shoved in our faces. Am I wrong to say that? Calories seem like the most important thing when it comes to our food.
If I pay attention to the calorie range beside food items, and only that, I’m severely overlooking everything else that goes into a restaurant-prepped meal.
(That may even be a deliberate distraction to customers. Who’s to say?)
Yes, ordering fast-food is a choice. It’s a choice to put the fate of your food into the hands of corporations (which, we are doing regardless unless we are subsistent farmers).
I’m as guilty as anyone of choosing convenience; I don’t always have 30 or 40 minutes to spend in the kitchen.
When I walked into Chipotle today (which was a totally fine meal, don’t get me wrong — I’m not trying to hammer or indite Chipotle), I knew I wasn’t reaching for the healthiest lunch.
Calories are indeed one, important, part of the equation.
But it’s much more than that.
There’s much more behind the curtain here.
For those of us who do or do not care so much about calories, there’s a whole world of health concerns not at all related to calories. That’s what I worry about most.
