I ate lunch at Panera today, and there was something new on the menu: calorie counts.

It didn't mess with my head as badly as this prior experience, nor did it rattle me for very long. It annoyed me and upset me a bit, in no small part because I wasn't expecting it.

The calories were listed on the right-hand side of the menu, next to the price. The description of the food was listed on the left. When I was deep in the ED, I would have picked everything out beforehand if I couldn't weasel my way out of the occasion, so I could make absolutely sure I wasn't eating one single calorie more than I had to. I would have asked for the chips (if my meal came with that--it threw people off my trail) and saved them "for later," neatly disposing of them when no one was looking. Early in recovery, I would have made a minimal attempt to ignore the information, and then have found the lowest calorie item and ordered that. I would have gotten the apple or the carrot sticks as a side dish, but I would, in fact, eat these.

I was able to be much more calm and rational. Instead of finding the item with the lowest calories and then deciding if I would order that (as long as I didn't hate anything integral to the dish), I looked at the different dishes and then checked the calories.

In an ideal world, the calorie information would just be numbers, like the metric tons of methane produced by flatulent bovines. "Party facts," my undergraduate advisor called them. But over a decade of an ED means that facts aren't just facts. They're very emotionally charged facts. They're not just numbers, nor are they going to BE just numbers any time in the near future.

Given that fact, I did the next best thing: I tried to make the (irrelevant) information as small a part of my decision as possible. I did order a yummy entree salad with a hunk o' bread on the side. It fulfilled my meal plan requirements. The number was also within the "acceptable" limits. Was there something else on the menu I might have liked more? Probably. Were the calories a factor? Yep. Were they the only factor? Not really.

The big difference wasn't that I overcame my calorie-counting compulsion* and felt the shackles fall from my ankles. The difference was that I could be much more rational and healthy about my decision-making process. I could focus on what I might want to order AND the calories. Usually the first factor was almost completely ignored. As long as I didn't hate the lowest calorie item, that was what I ordered. I freaked out and all semblance of sanity went out the window. This time, it didn't. This time, I was able to step back for a second, take a deep breath, and do what I needed to do.

*I get obsessive about numbers in general- the OCD and the AN pretty much fed the compulsive counting.

Let me subtitle this blog post as: Excuse me while I jump off a cliff.

Whatever your feelings on the passage of the Health Care Reform Bill this past Sunday (and I have many of them), I read the following in an AP Newswire article this evening:

A requirement tucked into the massive U.S health care bill will make calorie counts impossible for thousands of restaurants to hide and difficult for consumers to ignore. More than 200,000 fast food and other chain restaurants will have to include calorie counts on menus, menu boards and even drive-throughs.

Like I said: excuse me while I jump off a cliff.

My annoyance and irritation at this is mainly related to the fact that all throughout my recovery, my treatment team has drilled into my head that I shouldn't be obsessively counting calories, that my body doesn't need to count calories in order to maintain a healthy weight, and that one meal out is one meal out and if I want to have a burger and fries, I should have the burger and fries. Dammit. So if what my team is telling me is true, then what the hell is this push for calorie labels on everything?

Do I still count calories? In a more existential sort of way, yes. I am acutely, painfully aware of how many calories are in the food I eat. I might not always tally everything up like I used to, but I'm aware. I remain very wary of restaurants because I don't know what's really in the food I'm eating. I don't know how it was prepared, and I don't know exactly how many calories it has or what ingredients were used. Generally speaking, my tactic has been to order the item on the menu that seemed like it had the fewest calories. I'm pretty good at this. It's still my default menu scanning effort- any butter or cream sauces mean "loaded with fat," fried is also bad, sauteed could be dicey, broiled or grilled is okay, pasta and cheese are not good...and on and on it goes.

Yet again, my treatment team has tried to convince me that I don't need to scrutinize the menu for "hidden" calories and the minutiae of how my dish is prepared. Does it sound good? Okay, then.

The idea with placing calorie counts on the menu is that they will (in theory) change what people order. (For the record, research shows that it really hasn't changed ordering habits.) Taking the idea further, the idea is that if people knew how many calories were really in that dinner they ordered, they would order something different. Which, okay, fine, but shouldn't your criteria for what to order include a little more information that just calories? Are we really that stupid that we need to be (ahem) spoon fed our health and calorie information like this?

If some of my friends and relatives are to be believed, this healthcare reform bill may have saved us from dying of TEH FATZ only to help us die of TEH SOCIALISMZ. I'm not necessarily anti-government, but I'm just scratching my head over the wisdom of this idea. Our culture is more obsessed than ever with food and weight, and that hasn't seemed to change our average BMI by very much. And really, if the only reason people were fat was because they were stuffing their gullets with Big Macs at McDonald's, then I think we would have figured that out.

Another issue is that this law is aimed at chain restaurants, which tend to be (on average) cheaper and more affordable than swanky, upscale joints. Research has already shown that the higher your socioeconomic status, the lower your risk of obesity, and a Scientific American article last week pointed out the connection between obesity and food stamp recipients. In a sense, these rules imply that poor people are just too stupid to figure out what (and how much) to eat. Maybe eating fast food is the lack of better alternatives. Maybe it's being too damn tired to cook. Maybe it's all the food your kids know because it's the only restaurant in your area. Regardless, simply adding labels to the menus won't help if there's nowhere else to eat.

I'm just...annoyed. Irritated. And unsure what to make of it all.

As I've written before, I'm not much into resolutions. I like the idea (self-improvement), but I've spent so long trying to change myself that I kind of want a break. Nor have any of these so-called "changes" actually resulted in anything positive. But, as the premise of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) states, I am doing the best I can right now, but I can always do better.

In terms of recovery, this year has been incredibly rocky. I don't know exactly where I'm at or if there's even a map or a guidebook anyways. But I know that before I can say that I'm "recovered" or "in remission" or that the AN has finally become dormant, I have to work on a bunch of things. So, in no particular order, here they are:

Better utilize my support system. This was a big deal when I relapsed earlier this year- I don't know whether reaching out would have changed anything, or even if I was mentally able to reach out once things got going, but (and this is a big "but") I could have reached out when the depression and anxiety once again started to overwhelm me. I don't know whether I'm just not good at reaching out for help, if I'm just too damn stubborn, or if the issue is more related to not wanting to ask for help. I suppose the "why" doesn't matter as much as my response.

Develop better ways to cope with anxiety. I've come to realize that anxiety is a bigger driver of my eating disorder than even perhaps depression. When they both strike together, it's like a version of the perfect storm. The anorexia props up my self-esteem and reduces my anxiety--what more could a girl ask for? Uh, quite a bit, I think. My medication hasn't "cured" my depression, but I can manage my moods just fine. The SSRI doesn't do the same for the anxiety. At all. I need to find ways to manage my anxiety that doesn't involve excessive exercise and food restriction.

Stop counting calories. 'Nuff said. It's as much of an OCD ritual as it is an ED behavior, and it's almost instinctual. Drives me bonkers not to do it.

Find fun movement. My brain gets this jolt of dopamine when I exercise, so it's hard for me determine the real relationship between "fun" and "exercise." However, I want to find activities that I look forward to, rather than just waiting breathlessly for that endorphin rush. There were any number of things I wanted to try when I was in the DC area, but they all "interfered" with my exercise routine, so I never actually tried them. Then there was the fact that my office and my apartment had fitness centers, and I could never quite bring myself to pay for the privilege of working out when I could do it for free without getting in my car. Mainly, though, it was the "routine" thing.

There will no doubt be other things I will add to this list, and I have some life goals that I'm not especially keen on sharing with the whole wide world out there, but I think this makes a good start with what I need to work on in order to keep moving forward in recovery.

When it comes to edible calories, I'm pretty much an expert. I can eyeball and guess the calories in pretty much anything, and those numbers seem to stick in my mind for the rest of eternity. Need to know the calories in a stalk of celery or a cucumber? I'm your girl.

A large part of my eating disorder was limiting the number of calories I ate (or at least balancing that with how much I exercised). Life became a series of numbers: calories, fat grams, pounds, minutes exercised. And the more I could limit the first three of those numbers, the better I tended to feel. Though my diet was rather bland and boring, I enjoyed how it "tasted" of control and strength and willpower. I enjoyed how soothing it was to know exactly what I was going to eat and when.

Calories. The fewer, the better. That was my life for the past decade in about five words.

It was relieving, in a sense, to be told what to eat. Either the anorexia was telling me what to eat, or it was my dietitian. Deciding (remember The Paradox of Choice?) was often freakishly difficult, and I still rely on rules and regulations to help me meet my dietary needs. Often I fantasize about someone giving me The Perfect Food Plan that tells me exactly what to eat and when.

But I was reading the 360 Degrees of Mindful Living blog, and the author, Pavel Somov, wrote about Experiential Calories:

A Nutritional Calorie is a unit of energy. The job of a Nutritional Calorie is to fuel your Body. An Experiential Calorie – to coin a term — is a unit of awareness, a unit of conscious presence, a unit of meaning. The job of an Experiential Calorie is to enrich your Mind.

Of course, the chief thing I restricted in the course of my eating disorder was food. I'm not trying to deny that. But throughout my eating disorder, "restricting" became more than just a way of eating, it became a way of life. I restricted money but not letting myself buy things (or panicking when I did). I restricted social experiences by isolating myself. I restricted fun by always making myself work or do something "useful."

The very first therapist I saw, just as the ED was taking hold and a good 6 months before I had a clue that my increasing food obsessions were in any way problematic, assigned me 30 minutes of "fun" each day. I told her I was too busy for fun, fun was for sissies, I'm already living on 4 hours of sleep- how am I going to manage on three-and-a-half?, I had no use for fun. No, she told me, 30 minutes of fun, every day. Fine, I said, I'll do my fun but you can't make me enjoy it!

Not surprisingly, the thought of spending thirty! whole! minutes! doing! nothing! caused so much anxiety that I never really did it. I never realized this restriction-of-fun had anything to do with my eating disorder. And I never realized how hard it would be for me to begin incorporating other sorts of "calories" in my life.

I've never especially had a problem fueling my brain with Intellectual Calories. I'm a geek. If my brain doesn't get enough Intellectual Calories, it seems that restricting my food calories can't be far behind. But things like Social Calories and Fun Calories and Soothing Calories? They seem somehow bizarre and unnecessary- much like food does when I'm in the throes of anorexia. Yet they very much are necessary (yes, Carrie, just like food!), even though they remain absurdly nebulous.

I think these Experiential Calories are a bit more neglected in eating disorder recovery, in part because it is hard to measure them precisely. But at this past year's NEDA conference, Nancy Zucker spoke of how, even well into recovery, many of her patients' lives seem somewhat rigid or restricted somehow, as if the AN mindset has permeated their lives in every respect, not just food. Obviously, correcting the intake of food calories needs to come first, because a deficit of food calories is immediately life threatening. Experiential calories can wait a bit, if for no other reason than a malnourished person can't take in experiential calories very well. But me and others with EDs need to learn how to regulate both food and experiential calories in our lives.

Guidelines on how many food calories we should eat each day permeate our culture. They're not always right for everyone, but they're there. These Experiential Calories of which I write tend to vary even more between person to person. Whether the Faceless Internet Nutrition Providers will take a hint from the Experiential Calorie folks remains to be seen, but I would love nothing more than a set of rules or guidelines to tell me how much socializing I need to do and how much "fun" I need to have.

I guess this means I need to increase my intake of Flexibility Calories, eh?

So I'm attending my cousin's wedding in NYC, and we get to the hotel early today--early enough that we got lunch in the city as opposed to along the way. We ended up at a national chain restaurant because it was near the hotel, and I sat down and opened my menu, and...

I totally forgot that calorie counts on menus were mandatory within New York City. Totally forgot. At first, I shook my head a little and tried to clear my vision, hoping that it was some mistake or maybe the little numbers just accompanied some of the dishes.

Oh no. Every appetizer, every entree, every sandwich, every dessert, every beverage had a calorie count next to it.

My head started spinning and hasn't stopped, nearly twelve hours later. Numbers swam in front of my face. I didn't look at what the food was- all I could see was calories, calories, everywhere the calories. I don't remember anything on the menu, except what I ordered. Thankfully, I have a meal plan from my dietitian that helped me focus a bit, and I did pick something reasonable.

I struggled the rest of today. All I could think when I ate was "How many calories would be listed on the menu for this? How many calories are in this bite? How about this one?" It's bad enough for the numbers to be buzzing in my head all the time, but to see them in front of my eyes, in black and white, when eating at restaurants is hard to begin with, was a little too much. If my obsession with calories and numbers is supposedly a Bad Thing--and given the effects this obsession has had on my health and my life, I can see how my treatment team might think that--why are there calories on the menu? If calories could turn into a life-threatening obsession for me, couldn't it turn into an obsession for others?

I understand, to some extent, that the purpose of printing calories on menus is intended to be positive, a way to empower people to make better choices. I get that. But all of that empowerment! and knowledge! and health! might not be what goes through people's minds when they order. Even before the ED, I would be self-conscious about ordering something too "high calorie." I would feel guilty. I wouldn't want to call attention to myself. What would the other people think?

Here's the less-than-pretty corollary to the above: I would compare myself to what others ordered. If I ate something "healthy" and they had the cheeseburger and fries, I might very well have felt virtuous that I was "better" than them. I mean if eating a salad is a so-called "good" choice, and eating lots of fries is a "bad" choice, then it would make me "better" because I had the salad. Right?

For the record, I had a sandwich, not a salad. My mom offered to read me the menu choices and/or decide for me, which would have been a good thing had I not already seen the calorie counts by the time my mom figured out that I was silent not out of awe for the spectacular menu choices but that my brain was spinning from all of the calories. By then, the damage was done, and I simply found the first thing where the number didn't totally freak me out, that wasn't on the diet menu, and also fulfilled most of my meal plan requirements. And then I snapped the menu shut and stared off into space.

As I was staring off into space, calorie counts clicking through my head on a frenetic abacus, all I wanted to do was to find the person who first had this bright idea and introduce them to the madness in my head. I want them to understand what it is like to be me. I want them to understand that good intentions can have very bad effects. I want to explain to them that people making "healthier" choices because they feel guilty eating what they want isn't really any better.

Wouldn't someone take about 30 seconds out of their day and think about the "downsides" to this obesity hysteria?

Most people with eating disorders know a lot about calories--at least how to count them. But I found an article in the Journal of Nutrition called "A History of the Calorie in Nutrition" that was fantastically interesting.

The calorie, as it were, was defined as a unit of heat "sometime between 1787 and 1824." The first definition (in French) appeared in 1845 as "la quantité de chaleur nécessaire pour élever 1 gramme d'eau de 1 degré, et que l'on appelle unité de chaleur ou calorie." Translated roughly: a calories is the amount of heat necessary to raise the temperature of one gram of water one degree Celcius.

Not a hint of morality. Maybe this is why French Women Don't Get Fat?

Food calories, however, are actually kilocalories, or kcal, or Calorie (capital "C"), and it was first used to measure energy in food in the 1940s. It's use as a unit of human energy needs first appeared in an 1894 human physiology text by JH Raymond. However, Raymond's contribution wasn't the most important in terms of the popular understanding of the Calorie. Rather,

The Calorie began to enter popular American vocabulary after Atwater explained the unit in his 1887 article in Century magazine. The most important avenue was probably the USDA Farmers' Bulletins, which provided the first U.S. food databases to be used in dietetics. Then, as now, American audiences were interested in managing weight, and the Calorie was soon introduced in articles and books. For example, Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters' best-selling "Diet and Health with Key to the Calories" specifically cited Farmers' Bulletin 142 as a source of information. Eventually, the Calorie was adopted for the nutrition facts panels on U.S. food labels. At present, there does not seem to be a movement by policy makers in the US to replace the Calorie with the kJ on nutrition information panels.

It was Dr. Peters' book, however, that ultimately turned a Calorie from a unit of energy into a unit of morality. A wave of Calorie-counting hysteria swept the nation, and hasn't really left. Of course, people weren't content to only count calories- they started counting carbs and fat grams and fiber and sodium and cholesterol, until your day's worth of food can seem more like an Excel spreadsheet than an enjoyable experience.

Okay, so I'm going to use a Western metaphor for a literal Hindu belief, that was inspired by a recent post from the blog On Simplicity.

We all have sacred cows—those rules, guidelines, and things that we feel are immutable and untouchable, writes blog author Sara. I’m of the opinion that some things really are sacred, but they’re few and far between. Most of things we’re “supposed” to do are really quite optional.

An eating disorder kind of requires many sacred cows- rules that cannot be broken no matter how inane or inconvenient, concepts and delusions held tight by the sufferer that no one else can quite understand. One of my sacred cows has to do with calories, which for an eating disorder, really isn't surprising. However, you throw in a large pinch of OCD and you have my problem: foods need to have a "nice" number of calories. Despite my math major and smashing ability at mental arithmetic, my food needs to come in increments of 25, 50, 75 or 100. And numbers that end in 50 and 100 are far better than those that end in 25 or 75.

So when I discover that the Eggo waffles I want to buy have calories that look like X+10, I kind of have a meltdown in the freezer aisle. Thermodynamics be damned- it is possible. Yes, I bought the Eggos, largely because I knew that the 90 calorie yogurts I had in the fridge would not only make a nice topping, but also make the waffles into a "nice" number and the world would be well.

Yep. Sacred cow.

It's really a pain in the ass, and even I know this. I know it's not rational, I know those extra 10 calories aren't going to appear on my thighs in all of their waffle-y goodness and make the crazy guy next to me on the Metro squirt some syrup on me (I've seen stranger things happen).

There are other rules, of course. I have a specific breakfast I eat pretty much every day. I might mix things up and have blueberries or an apple instead of my banana, but otherwise? I eat the same breakfast everyday. And I'm pretty okay with that. Part of it is liking the breakfast, and that it's easy to prepare in less than 5 minutes when you're 90% comatose. Part of it, thought, is the rituals and rigidity that's a part of the disorder. I'm working with my therapist not to stop eating that breakfast for good, because that's not the point. I want to be able to eat a different breakfast if I choose and be okay with that.

Eating breakfast is a sacred cow that must stay. Skipping meals is bad. I've learned a few things in my recovery and that is probably the top one. But what I have for breakfast- whether it's my standard fare, my X+10 calorie waffles, or something completely different, can't be so stinking sacred.

It's well-known that people in recovery from restricting anorexia--even after weight restoration--need significantly more calories just to maintain their weight. Some of this may be an ongoing metabolic dysfunction; some of it may also be the body continuing to repair itself, although the repair is not reflected in weight.

It also, in a word, sucks.

I've been weight restored for about a year and a half now, and I'm pretty active, all things considered. Still, I need to eat a lot more now than I ever remember needing to eat. Physically, it's not all that easy. And it's not exactly cheap. The biggest toll, however, is emotional.

For almost a decade, I prided myself on eating less than everyone else. Now, I have to eat more. I've gotten the comments of "Oh, you're so lucky to be able to eat whatever you want." But if I ate whatever I wanted, it wouldn't be this much, let me tell you. Eating what I need to is a total reversal of everything I've thought and done these past years.

In our culture, women are NOT encouraged to dig in and eat up. Food should be approached with caution. It can make you fat, after all. And I don't think there will be "Hungry Women" entrees in the freezer aisle anytime soon. There is a kooky diet site called "Hungry Girl," but it's basically low-cal substitutions for the foods you really want. Want some Halloween candy? Try a "pumpkin crunchie," a little meringue thing. So if a woman IS hungry, she certainly isn't going to honor that and have a Snickers bar.

So here I come, into this environment, not only receiving a quasi-cultural cringe, but also from the inside. I can't help but compare what I eat now to what I ate at the height of my eating disorder. And I feel this knee-jerk response, this intrinsic oh-you-fat-weak-pig, that makes me panic just a little. Knowing that these abnormal caloric requirements are normal and have been verified in a research study could very well be keeping me sane- and in recovery.

Yet I keep eating. I don't know what else there is to do. I am trying to surrender to the process, to run with it. Grudgingly, perhaps, but I also know it's the only way out.

I've blogged about New York City posting calories on restaurant menus before (here), and yesterday it happened: all chain restaurants in NYC had to post the calories on the menus. In large type. By the price. Where everyone could see before they ordered.

Utterly craptacular.

It's supposed to combat the rising levels of obesity and how we're all going to some fat-laden hell because of it. That people can't make natural decisions about what they want to eat. But dieting basically wrecks havoc upon normal appetite regulating mechanisms. So this can't be helping with large portions at restaurants. You might want to rebel against the diet police. Or be so out of touch with hunger and fullness signals that you eat everything.

But what's interesting are some of the other implications of this.

1) Only chain restaurants are required to post calories. So you'll never know how many calories are in the 18 oz porterhouse with beurre blanc sauce at Delmonico's. Who are the primary target audience of fast food restaurants? The working poor. Those who need cheap food, fast. Those with moms who are working all day and want to bring home a treat to their families. Mickey D's is it. Who goes to Delmonico's? The wealthy. Those who can sip on mineral water all day and shop at Sak's.* Who can afford to work out and hire personal trainers. So who does this bill affect the most? The poor. Who might not have a whole lot of other options.

2) Mostly I see this requirement as an effort in stigma and shame. No one wants to be seen ordering something "unhealthy" or "fattening." It's seen as bad taste. As something taboo. Everyone knows the point of this bill is to "combat obesity"** and get everyone to eat healthier. It's pretty obvious.

No one wants to be fat, or be seen as fat, or be seen as unhealthy. Ordering a Big Mac is now a faux pas in many circles. Dieting and health have become our generation's chastity belts. We need something to keep us in line, prevent us from being derailed by temptation. All in the name of health.

But is it really? The NYC Health Department might very well have intended to "promote health," however misguided. But when you're posting calories in a very public place, there's more that goes into it than just "health." When people order a Big Mac, there's the nagging fear that those around them are tsk-tsking. Look at how unhealthy he is. I can't believe she's ordering that. And that's just the people in line with you! Now if you ever visit McDonald's and you don't fit our society's standards for thin (which is, like, basically everyone) shame on you- you know how bad it is! It's ALL YOUR FAULT that you are fat.

It seems like the bill was intended to "empower people" to make better choices about food. Which I'm all in favor of. But it really creates tremendous shame and stigma around food. And that's not something I want to supersize.

*I know I'm greatly oversimplifying and using every stereotype available. Bear with me.

**We're already involved in two very pointless wars. Do we really need to battle with a group of people who really aren't harming anyone?

The New York Calorie Counters Department (NYCCD) is at it again. Their original proposal to require all fast food restaurants to post calorie information on their menus.

Prominently.

For everyone to see.

I'm going to New York City in about 10 days for an outing with my program. If this passes, I am NOT eating in a fast food restaurant.* Which is unfortunate, because it will

a) demonstrate that the "campaign" is working
and
b) I don't have anything against Micky D's. The white meat chicken tenders are remarkably tasty, and the 4-piece McNuggets are a great pick me up for only $1. Granted, I eat there about twice a year, but still. Most of their food is gross, but I don't think they're evil people.

Eating, it seems, is now a crime. Okay, fine, we'll give you some leeway. You can have lettuce. And black coffee. And Splenda. But that's it. Frankly, it's no one's business what I eat. Obviously, when I had nearly starved myself to death, that's someone else's business because the anorexia had left me unable to make it my own business. We have privacy at the pharmacy counter, yet we don't have privacy at the food counter.

Ridiculous.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. There is no evidence that increased knowledge of food and fat and calories changes anything about a person's food choices (unless they're eating disordered like me). To use their data, we're getting fatter and fatter. We're also more aware of everything single freaking thing that we put in our mouths than ever before. If there was a positive correlation, we would have seen it.

I think it's good that they have nutrition and allergy information available. It can be useful. Just don't throw it in my face. It's like my feelings on PDA (public display of affection, though personal digital assistants can, at times, also fall into this category): I don't care if the cutsey couple kisses or has sex. I just don't want to watch it.

Another story, also on MSNBC.com:

Being a little heavy may have some benefits

I'm still not sure what to think about this story. On the one hand, it's nice to see some sort of anti-hysteria piece. At least that's what it appears on the surface. Yet some comments by the doctor at the end really pissed me off. It seems like it's okay to be a "little heavy" but you better not get FAT!

Thoughts?

*Though given my vast calorie knowledge, I don't know that there's a whole lot that I don't know.

This week, a New York City judge threw out a law requiring certain city restaurants to have the calorie information of all of their dishes printed on the menus.

Why?

It conflicted with another federal regulation describing how restaurants should list calories on a voluntary basis.

This brings both good and bad news.

The good? I can go to a restaurant in New York and not be forced to contemplate how many calories and fat grams I'm consuming. If I want to know, I can ask. But I don't have to know.

The bad? It's only a matter of time. True, the rulings and regulations were aimed almost entirely at national chain restaurants and not at more local joints, but the trend is disturbing.

Health departments and their officials say that knowing the number of calories you consume at any given time is a way to make an "informed choice about your health." They are always bringing up the absurd level of alarm at today's "obesity epidemic".

I find this amusing. For about as long as I can remember, there have been calorie and nutrition facts printed on packaged foods. Also for as long as I can remember, people have been decrying how fat we're getting and how much it's getting worse. Which leads to the following conclusion: if knowing how many calories you were consuming would help people lose weight, you would think they'd figure it out in about 20 years.

I don't know anyone who isn't aware of calories and fat grams and weight loss. You'd have to be living under a rock not to know. I will confess that people are stupid. But they're not that stupid. At least not all the time.*

So maybe it's not that people don't know or don't care, because I would bet they do. Most women are dieting or want to lose weight. They believe it's good for their health, and they'll look better, too! Moms want to set a good example for their kids. Or children for their parents.

I think the main reason why this stuff doesn't work: our bodies did not evolve to calculate how many calories we "needed" to consume each day. We are not wired to count calories and eat the same exact damn thing every day. You ate what carrion you and your sweetie managed to scavenge, and that was that. Your body didn't tell you to eat when it didn't need fuel because it was detrimental in the long run. We have better things to do.

Ruby Tuesdays tried printing calorie info on their menus because they thought customers would want to know what they were eating.

They didn't. Eventually, the company received so many complaints that the offending numbers were removed from the menu.

I am well aware that calorie and food information can be helpful to some people in some circumstances. But I don't need any help to make myself feel guilty when tucking into a nice dinner. If I want it, I'll order it. If I end up ruining my health, that's too bad. No one is going around and offering to sue Weight Watchers on my behalf because of how they promote a diet mentality.

I never thought the First Amendment would be used to help me retain my freedom to eat whatever the hell I want with joy and without guilt, but there you have it.

*Then again, in this time frame we also went from Ronald Reagan to Dubya, so go figure.