You Are What You Eat

Things at the supermarket and in the stores and restaurants have certainly changed over the years. It used to be that you went to the supermarket or into a store and bought food or drink which was packaged without much indication of what was in it, you went to the checkout lane where a cash register totaled your expenses, and you went on your merry way. Food sizes and portions in restaurants were of a reasonable size, what you saw is what you got, and people didn't overindulge as much.

Then about 25 years ago, the bar code appeared, and several years later, nutrition info was highlighted prominently on just about everything. The internet exploded onto the national scene roughly ten or so years ago (although there were plenty of people frequenting listservs and the like well before that time), and since then there's been more and more awareness of the things we put in our mouths. Couple this with the rise of the suburbs, the increased insulation of the family and children from the world around them (When was the last time you saw a bunch of kids out in the street, playing stickball? Running around the neighborhood? Doing anything that didn't involve a cell phone or a joystick?), and the supersizing of just about everything edible and potable, and now you have magazine and newspaper articles discussing the national epidemic of obesity, the need to pay more attention to what we consume.

When information such as the proportion of salt, fat, etc. was added to packaging, I know I changed. I started comparing food items more often, selecting those that not only had lower overall calories, but especially eschewing foods that had more salt or added junk than necessary. While I'm not haunting the natural foods aisles, I'm definitely far more conscious of what I choose to eat than I was, say, fifteen years ago when I had my first apartment.

Yet one sector remains immune: fast-food joints. While most places have a poster with nutrition and ingredient information posted on the wall (usually in the corridor leading to the restrooms, and away from the front counter. Hmm...), most people just queue up, glance at the menu, order their combos and Happy Meals and plunk themselves down in a booth or head out the door, with nary a second thought about what they're going to feed on.

Before we go any further, I confess I do the same thing. On a night when we're too tired to cook, or in a rush, or out running errands, we'll stop in and grab a burger or the like, and polish it off. Yet it would be nice to know exactly how many calories we're popping into our maws, what we're going to be adding to our digestive system. While we won't be aping Morgan Spurlock anytime soon, it wouldn't hurt to be a more informed consumer.

Enter the Golden Arches-- I don't know what prompted them to do so, but they are now going to include nutritional information on their packaging. It's probably all tied to the bottom line, but the last time I went to McDonald's, they had made some changes, such as adding salads, and offering the choice of substituting salads and the like instead of fries that not only seem geared to pull in people or keep faithful customers, but is actually a good change overall. I'm noticing the competition, such as Wendy's, starting to implement similar changes in their combo meal offerings.

Even though I'm here in L.A., I have yet to see the new packaging, but I'm looking forward to seeing it, and to observe how it changes (if anything) our culture. Will people actually act on this "new" information? Will it be a sea change? Or is McDonald's merely trying to resume leadership of the fast-food pack and regain market share? Possibly all of these things-- we'll see what happens.