Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Bean burritos (again)

I have a bean burrito addiction. (Actually, all Mexican food, but bean burritos in particular.) I heard on the news yesterday that the Center for Science in the Public Interest had evaluated the menus at Baja Fresh and Chipotle, two of the fast food places where I frequently indulge in my bean burrito fixes, and I had a pretty good idea that I'd be dismayed by the results.

I already knew the damage from Baja Fresh, because they have their nutrional information on their web page. I'm in Weight Watchers and I'd looked everything up to calculate the points. I have been frustrated that Chipotle didn't have the numbers available (I even e-mailed and asked). Now I know why...just the freakin' tortilla has 340 calories.

So the burrito I get, the vegetarian without sour cream or cheese, is still 980 calories and 36 grams of fat.

I did a quick Internet search to find the whole report and I stumbled across an interesting web page...kinda the anti-CSPI. It's called the Center for Consumer Freedom, which has representatives from the restaurant industry, food companies, and consumers. (I wonder who the consumers are.) Their press release response to the CSPI had me rolling, especially

"Once again, the killjoys at CSPI have made lemons out of lemonade," said Richard Berman, Executive Director of the Center for Consumer Freedom. "This ridiculous tirade against Mexican dining is a classic reminder that while most of us derive pleasure from food, CSPI exists only to whine about it. As usual, the group's latest so-called research is a complete rejection of common sense, and suggests that Americans are too stupid to make their own food choices."

Now, ok, CSPI gets quite bombastic in some of their publications (one of their regular features is called "Food Porn"), but at least they are getting the nutritional information out there. Since health information in the popular press seems to be of the "This Will Kill You" or the "This Will Cure You" variety, a certain hysteria is probably inevitable.

(When I was in journalism school I did a semester-long independent study with a scientific reporter. It is difficult to report on many scientific subjects without dumbing the material down too much or being too complex...and the average reader of the average daily paper or weekly magazine is looking for the "And this affects me how...?" angle. So I'm not saying that to bash "the press.")

Oh, and I do appreciate the information that CSPI gets out. I do want to know that a Chipotle tortilla is 340 calories. They irk me, though, when they go beyond informing and start calling for recalls of products, as they are with a meat substitute called Quorn. A lot of people are sensitive to Quorn and get a pretty bad reaction. I sympathize, because I have food sensitivities and I've experienced the adverse reaction in a public place thing, and that ain't cool at all. But I can tolerate Quorn. I like it. And while I think that every box should have a label warning people that a percentage of the population has a sensitivity or intolerence, and while I think that every product that includes it should be adequately labelled so that sensitive people can avoid it, darn it, I want to be able to buy it.

Switching tirades back to the Center for Consumer Freedom...I loved the comment about Americans being to stupid to make their own food choices. The CDC reports the prevalence of obesity among adults to be almost 20%, way up from the last ten years. Is their an adult left in the country who hasn't seen the data on the health consequences of obesity?

I can probably count on my hands the number of people in the country whose health actually concerns me. If everybody else wanted to eat three Big Macs a day I really don't care. I don't care if people smoke unfiltered Camels and shoot heroin either. Or if they ride motorcycles without helmets. My only objection to any of that is the economic cost I need to absorb when the consequences of their decisions catch up to them, but hey. I walk and hike in tax-supported public parks that the morbidly obese, hypertensive, diabetic, arthritic non-exerciser doesn't use. So maybe it evens out in the end.)

I had a point...oh yeah. Some people are downright stupid, but some of us are just busy. So the information necessary to exercise common sense needs to be available. It's on cigarettes, it's on alcohol, it can be on a burrito.

Personally I'd love to work for the Center for Thoughtful and Reasonable Analysis of All Available Data with Appropriate Advisories on the Limitations of Said Data for Informed and Responsible Individuals Who Are Willing to Make Decisions and Accept the Consequences.

But I'm not quitting my day job.

Posted by Nic at October 1, 2003 12:32 PM | TrackBack