Why? Well, how else would you figure that a kid's serving of Chicken McNuggets, in fact, had more fat and calories than a cheeseburger?
The logic behind the new rule is this. If you see in black-and-white that Aussie cheese fries top out at close to 800 calories per portion, you might go, Hmmmm.
Second, even if you don't care, it might guilt-trip the chain, which happens to be Outback Steakhouse. (That's what happened with the McNugget. Once the calorie secret was out, McDonald's reformulated them with lower-calorie white meat.)
In the New York City Department of Health's best-case scenario, other chains follow that model and recalibrate their menus. Everyone's pants fit better. The diabetes epidemic hits a speed bump.
Plus, as New York goes on this one, so goes the nation. More than 20 other local governments are chewing over similar bills, Philadelphia now included.
So the stakes are pretty high. (The suit to block the rule goes to trial in federal court today.). And big guns are required.
And that is where David Allison comes in: In addition to his professorship in biostatistics and nutrition at the University of Alabama (Birmingham), he is widely published, and as he introduces himself in the filing against the New York City Board of Health, he's president-elect of "the largest and most prestigious academic society for the study of obesity in North America."
That would be the Obesity Society.
Last week, part of the content of his filing hit the news. The society's members were not amused. Part of it questioned whether fast-food joints should be singled out. (Customers who eat at them, Allison argues, eat chips and drink soda at home. While watching TV!)
And did New York's health commissioner ever think about this one: If a teenager is denied the comalike fullness conferred by a Double Whopper With Cheese, he might binge on low-cal snacks, the sum total of which could have more calories than the Double Whopper had to begin with.
