This is supposed to be an up and coming "Third Way" in politics, sort of a cross between the Nanny State that tells you what to do and the Cool Uncle State that lets you do whatever you want to do. The Tories in the UK are enthusiastic about this stuff and this book in particular. (You can listen to a podcast by the author here.)
I posted the example before of some place in SoCal banning fast food restaurants in an attempt to force people to eat better food. That's pretty much the Nanny State.
Now we have the city of LA forcing restaurants to post the calorie counts on their menus. This would be an example of Libertarian Paternalism...you're allowed to make your own choice, but information is provided.
I like this idea much better than the ban. I'm counting calories as it is right now, and that would be a useful bit of information for me to make decisions. I know that in Taiwan McDonalds prints calories on the packaging, but isn't that a bit too late, once you've already bought the item?
(I also like Unit Pricing. Carrefour does a good job with this. Costco not so much. It actually pisses me off when there is no unit pricing in a store.)
Now, the restaurants are apparently opposed to this idea. I am not sure why that should be.
Once you've actually sat down in a restaurant, are you going to leave because the items on the menu are too fattening? Like you don't already know that TGI Fridays has huge portions of fried foods. Will most people who are not on a diet even care?
Or is there some risk that people start to order lighter fare on menus which somehow would translate to less profit?
I'd be interested to know how much of a hit the Hostess people took on sales of Twinkies when it had to first print nutritional information on the packaging.
Or maybe its just a pain in the ass to calculate calorie counts for menus? Using the recipe calculator doesn't seem too hard.
And will there be monitoring and enforcement?
I posted the example before of some place in SoCal banning fast food restaurants in an attempt to force people to eat better food. That's pretty much the Nanny State.
Now we have the city of LA forcing restaurants to post the calorie counts on their menus. This would be an example of Libertarian Paternalism...you're allowed to make your own choice, but information is provided.
I like this idea much better than the ban. I'm counting calories as it is right now, and that would be a useful bit of information for me to make decisions. I know that in Taiwan McDonalds prints calories on the packaging, but isn't that a bit too late, once you've already bought the item?
(I also like Unit Pricing. Carrefour does a good job with this. Costco not so much. It actually pisses me off when there is no unit pricing in a store.)
Now, the restaurants are apparently opposed to this idea. I am not sure why that should be.
Once you've actually sat down in a restaurant, are you going to leave because the items on the menu are too fattening? Like you don't already know that TGI Fridays has huge portions of fried foods. Will most people who are not on a diet even care?
Or is there some risk that people start to order lighter fare on menus which somehow would translate to less profit?
I'd be interested to know how much of a hit the Hostess people took on sales of Twinkies when it had to first print nutritional information on the packaging.
Or maybe its just a pain in the ass to calculate calorie counts for menus? Using the recipe calculator doesn't seem too hard.
And will there be monitoring and enforcement?
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