Know what you're eating
Updated 2:48 pm, Friday, September 21, 2012
It is no news that Houston has been called a Fat City. And while some of the data leading to this proclamation - good food, humid weather, long commutes - is more hearsay and conjecture than hard evidence, the facts do show that many Houstonians would benefit from a healthier lifestyle.
So, like the mayor before her and the mayor before that, Mayor Annise Parker announced Wednesday an initiative, dubbed Healthy Houston, to reduce obesity and increase healthy eating and exercise ("Mayor's goal: We all get skinnier," Page B4, Thursday).
But one of the big steps for a healthier Houston came this week not from City Hall, but from McDonald's, which announced Wednesday that it would begin posting calorie counts on all its menus.
A study on weight loss published this past summer in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that eating out often stands as a barrier to weight loss due to a lack of control over ingredients, cooking methods and portion sizes. And considering that Houston has more fast food restaurants than any other American city, that is a lot of opportunity to give up control.
But providing consumers with information about what they eat lets them make more informed decisions and take back some power over their meals. So while cities that have mandated calorie postings at chain and fast food restaurants didn't necessarily see teenagers make healthier choices, as studies revealed, it does mean easy access to information for people trying to track their caloric intake and eat healthier.
The lesson from these studies is that knowing the facts about what you eat is only a step, you have to know what to do with it. So as more restaurants begin to list caloric content, which is part of the Affordable Care Act upheld by the Supreme Court this summer, we hope that Houstonians will put this information to good use and act like informed consumers.