Some UK Restaurants To Provide Calorie Information

The Telegraph provides a list of 17 restaurant chains and catering companies that have pledged to give consumers calorie information about what they are eating, in accordance with criteria set out by the Food Standards Agency.

These fast food restaurant chains include Burger King, Pizza Hut and KFC.

On the radio this morning it was said that in America when customers are similarly informed about calorie content they tend on average to reduce the calorie content of their meal by about 50 to 100 calories. Presumably the Food Standards Agency and the Department of Health are hoping that customers in Britain will also consume fewer calories and that this will help to counter the increasing problem of obesity. Unfortunately this is extremely unlikely.

There has never been any reproducible evidence that eating fewer calories reduces obesity. If you look on the internet with appropriate words in your search engine you will find that dieting, by which most people mean eating fewer calories than the body requires, does not result in losing excess weight. You may find this surprising, especially if you are slim and untroubled by the need or desire to lose weight, but it is true. Whereas, if you search on the internet for information about salt intake and losing weight, you will find a wealth of evidence that reducing salt/sodium intake reduces excess weight.

The fact is that for people needing to lose weight, the calorie content is the least important information about food. What they need is to know the sodium or salt content of a meal, because the lower this is, the better for their health and weight. Fluid retention is what causes overweight, and salt intake is what maintains that fluid retention and overweight and adds to it, because all overweight and obese people are sensitive to salt. 'Overeating' as an explanation for overweight, and dieting/undereating as the way to reduce overweight, are concepts invented by 'experts' who have never tested out their theories. They just arrogantly and foolishly assumed that they were right, without doing any trials at all. By contrast, there is plenty of research to show that when salt-sensitive, i.e. overweight people, eat less salt, they excrete more urine and so reduce weight.

In truth, the provision of calorie information will be literally a waste of money. It is information about salt content that people need. Information about salt content would be worth the money because when people cut down on the amount of salt they eat their health benefits in many ways: lowered blood pressure, lowered risk of type 2 diabetes, lower risk of stroke, heart attack and many cancers, and as I have already explained, lower incidence and severity of obesity.

Lose weight by eating less salt. Go on. Try it. You will feel so much better.

Margaret Wilde www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk