Do you think about calories when you eat out?

In the last few months, I’ve become more aware of restaurants providing access to nutritional information. Stacey and I have been eating out and doing reviews of places we’ve eaten based on how healthy you can eat at the restaurant. Our first review was of Cactus Club, a chain restaurant in BC and Alberta. It was a learning experience trying to eat at Cactus Club while being very health conscious of what I was eating.

I love dining out and trying new restaurants and I’m lucky to live in Vancouver where there are a ton of great places to eat (my friend Angie’s blog Vancouver Good is a great source of information of the hottest places in town). However, if you’re trying to watch what you eat, it can be very difficult to know what you’re putting in your mouth when you’re not the one in the kitchen.

There’s an article in the Globe & Mail today about Ontario trying to be the first province in Canada to get chain restaurants to post calories on their menus. I’m very interested to see if they make progress with passing that bill. The reason why I am supportive of posting caloric information is because I believe learning about what you eat is very important.  (Hello?! Food Revolution by Jamie Oliver!) Being a part of WeightWatchers, I have learned so much about what to eat, how to eat and how to be healthy about what I eat. I think posting calories would help people be more aware of the nutritional value of food. Do I think providing calories on a menu would make people stop eating at restaurants? No. I think people will continue to eat out, and they will continue to eat meals that are less-than healthy but at least for those people who care, they can make informed choices.

Having said that, I do think that Ron Reaman, vice-president of federal government affairs for the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, makes a good point in the G&M article that calories don’t tell you the whole story. His example is comparing a diet coke versus a glass of milk. The coke has less calories, but do you really think that’s better for you? I think it’s up to the people to decide, but to make that decision you need the right information. And that information can be hard to find. It’ll be interesting to watch Ontario and see what happens.

What do you think? Would you like to see how many calories is in your food when you eat at a restaurant?