I work in food service and have been following this calorie posting thing pretty closely, and I think it is a great idea. Unfortunately, a lot of places are getting away on technicalities. If an item is a 'special' you don't have to have as complete info. Fast food places, coffee shops, basically anywhere that you order at the counter have to have the info on the actual menu board, on stand up cards in the pastry case, that kind of thing. Full service places only have to have some menus with nutritional info available, they don't have to print it on every menu. So, a lot of full service in NY was only giving the nutritional info menus on request.
There was one story about a restaurant, I think a TGI Friday's, that gave the menus to everyone on the first day and people really freaked out - particularly women - when they saw the info on their standard entree. The example given was a big salad with 1200-1300 calories. When those same women were given a menu without the info they were able to order the salad with freaking out, even though they had just read it two minutes before. The restaurant also sold completely out of the petite sirloin halfway through lunch, sold mostly to women.
So a lot of the places moved to the 'on demand' nutritional menu instead of giving it to everyone through the door. That doesn't seem like it is fair to the fast food places that have the info on the wall for everyone to see on every order...
I also read that just because they have to put the info in NY doesn't mean that they will update their website, using the same excuse mentioned above about different suppliers across the country.
Looks like California is the next place that might go with it - LA County first I think, then maybe the entire state.
Asking for a faxed menu from NY is a great idea...
New York menus...
