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June 5, 2006
Portion Control: It's What's (Left) For Dinner
Worried you haven't been hearing enough bad ideas lately? Be sure to check out the Food and Drug Administration's new report on food and obesity. Chief among the report's recommendations is that restaurants should adopt portion controls on what they serve to customers.
Worried you haven't been hearing enough bad ideas lately? Be sure to check out the Food and Drug Administration's new report on food and obesity. Chief among the report's recommendations is that restaurants should adopt portion controls on what they serve to customers.
Setting aside the fact that caloric intake hasn't changed in this country even while physical activity rates have plummeted, this proposal makes sense only if you believe that companies determine what consumers want, and not those consumers themselves. (Our response? Edsel.)
No matter how many times it gets spelled out, the truth never gets through to some folks: Restaurants are in the business of making their guests happy. Businesses that don't make people happy don't last very long.
The mindlessness attributed to the American consumer isn't very flattering, either. As The Dallas Morning News reported on Saturday, the FDA's report also claims that marketing can be used to trick consumers into eating politically correct foods. The News carried our response, too, where we pointed out that the report "implies that a picture of a salad will entice consumers to choose it over a burger, and that the public is too stupid to recognize the difference between the two."
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