Let’s try eating at a different restaurant

Bob Doyle, Columnist
Cumberland Times-News

June 27, 2009 09:19 pm

— Some Americans eat out almost every day while for others it is a rare occurrence. A recent survey reports that Americans spend half of their food money eating away from home.
This means that the average adult American eats about one fourth of his/her meals either in restaurants or consumes take out food away from home.
For many Americans, eating out is one of their favorite pastimes; here you can be served personally and have a wide choice of food. But there are tendencies in most of us that cause both overeating and poor food choices when we eat away from home. One unhealthy outlook is: Get as much food as you can for your dollar.
This is the great appeal of the buffet at most restaurants, pay more than a standard meal; but you can make repeated trips to the buffet area, filling up a new plate each time. It’s hard to resist overindulging on meat, seafood, deserts, veggies, fat laden dressings and biscuits.
When you are conversing with friends and family, we are often oblivious to the amount of food we consume. Another common rationale: I've had such a hard day at the office, or watching the kids, or in the field, etc. so I deserve a really good meal.
Is there an alternative to stuffing ourselves at restaurants, leading to unwanted pounds? Here are some ideas for a different kind of restaurant.
First, the menu should be divided into different sections, one for those with diabetes, another for those needing low salt (high blood pressure), yet another for those with high cholesterol, etc. There could be also a menu section with low fat entries, another section for low carbohydrates, and a section for low calorie entries.
There would be some overlap with some entries appearing in several different sections. Each meal on menu should include estimated total calories, grams of protein, grams of fiber, calories from saturated fat, calories from starches, etc.
As you pay your bill, this information should be printed on the receipt. This kind of restaurant would require the part time services of a nutritionist to keep the preceding numbers accurate and to plan and develop new healthy entries.
The current pricing structure in restaurants could be overhauled to encourage healthy eating. When you go into a grocery store, you have choices of different items but the prices you pay are primarily based on the pounds or ounce selected for each type of food.
Why should it be different in a restaurant? If you opt for buffet, then pay by the ounce for baked chicken, fried fish, sauteed potatoes, etc. How could this be done in an easy way? Train a food estimator who could quickly estimate the ounces of each type of food on the plate.
Then as a check have the full plate weighed to determine the total number of ounces selected. (The weight of an empty plate would be subtracted.) If the estimator's number of ounces were too high, scale down the bill. If the estimator's number of ounces were too low, scale up the bill.
As additional plates are filled with food, add these food ounces to the bill. So those who eat modestly and selectively will have a modest bill. Those who pile food on their plates and make repeated trips back to the buffet line will have a bill in line with their food consumption.
As for deserts, I would go even farther. Have a choice of deserts based on a penny per calorie. The restaurant would have good tasting deserts with 100 calories, costing $1. Then more ample deserts with 200 calories, costing $2, all the way up to 500 calorie deserts for $5.
This would encourage consumption of low calorie deserts (healthier) and discourage high calorie deserts (promote obesity). The presence of one such restaurant in a community would influence other restaurants to focus more on healthy food choices instead of "come here and eat all you want, you won't be sorry". Then a few hours later, you are sorry ("I can't believe I ate that much").
Unfortunately, those extra calories are put on display on our abdomen, arms and lower body parts. (3500 Excess calories = One pound of low density fat (bulges out).) I am not picking on folks, who because of their metabolism, tend to gain weight even with careful eating.
The moon has now retreated into the late evening sky. By Tuesday, the moon will be rising after midnight; our companion will appear half full in the southern sky in the early daylight hours. As the weekend nears, the moon will move into the southeastern dawn sky, to the right and above the brilliant planet Venus.
Bob Doyle invites comments or questions from readers, including those who work at or own restaurants. Leave a message at (301) 687-7799 or email him at Contact Bob Doyle at rdoyle@frostburg.edu.