Just like the restaurants might be a bit annoyed by the expense to change their signage, which would only wind up being added to the prices they charge their customers for food.
I was/am being facetious, of course. The original city regulation had the effect of pissing off officials of chain restaurants all across the country. Look at this notice on the Wendy's site:
http://www.wendys.com/nyc.jsp Note the snide comment on that page:
"We regret this inconvenience. If you have questions about this regulation, please contact the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and refer to Health Code Section 81.50."
If you read the requirements of the original NYC regulation, you had to wonder where they came up with the number of restaurants that would fall under this rule, etc. Also, the fact that they counted the number of restuarants in the entire country, not just NY City. Whoever put together that ruling also were not smart, as a Federal judge found the regulation ran afoul of a federal law. This is something the drafters of the regulation should have known beforehand. So, I have no confidence in the people who wrote and sponsored that regulation. Now, enough local restaurant owners give enough political contributions and have enough political clout to defeat a rule that would require all restaurants to post calorie counts for everything they sell. Hence, my snide comment about having the Department of Health research and publicize the information. So, if you walk into a big chain restaurant and see the calorie count of the burger you are going to buy, you might decide to give it a miss and walk across the street to the Greek coffee shop that gets its food from Restaurant Depot. But who says the burger you are going to get there is "healthier"? Something seems inherently unfair about the regulation.
Chain restaurants are not the only ones who cause obesity. Mom-and-pop ones also do. I remember a talk given by the executive chef of the Weis supermarkets chain at a fair in York, PA once. He pointed out that the reason food tastes so good in restaurants is because it often is high in fat and calories. He handed out two recipes for the same fish entree, one cribbed from a restaurant and one designed to be used by a consumer purchasing ingredients from Weis Markets. There was a huge difference in calorie count between the two recipes.
Newsday ran a story about the hearing they held the other day on Round 2 of the menu law (Round 1 was struck down by the federal court):
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nycals28vr5479020nov28,0,940702.story Remember, this is the same exact NYC Health Department that did not find evidence of rodents in a KFC/Taco Bell a few days before a videographer working for NBC did.
