Demystifying the Muffin: A Nudge in the Right Direction
posted by Frank Pasquale
New York City has mandated that many restaurants disclose calorie counts, and the results can be pretty surprising:
[W]hen three performers who spent the day rehearsing for “Shrek the Musical” walked into a restaurant on 42nd Street recently, they saw on the menu that a Japanese-style beef bowl had 1,090 calories. They decided to head down the street for a salad. “Counting calories is so 1980s,” said Rachel Stern, one of the dancers. “But when it’s right there, it’s kind of hard to ignore.”
500-calorie muffins and 1300-calorie salads are a real wake-up call. There are a few disappointments, though. As a frequent Dunkin’ Donuts customer (Starbucks’ Fritalian is way too elitist for me), I’ve noticed many of their franchises putting calorie ranges next to items–leaving customers to make a probabilistic assessment of how much a given donut will clog their arteries.
But some information is better than none, and it’s hard to see how people like Ed Glaeser can oppose a trend in policymaking as helpful as this. Philip Zimbardo sizes up the situation well–and explains how we can do more to promote good decisionmaking.
October 29, 2008 at 11:11 am
Posted in: Behavioral Law and Economics
Print This Post
Leave a Reply