News: Are restaurants sharing too much information?

In an era of online calorie counters, Atkins diets and point values, choosing what to eat for dinner can be downright confusing. But it’s not just a battle in your own kitchen’going out to eat can be just as daunting. These days, restaurants offer all kinds of nutritional information on their menus, and some experts claim that it’s just too much for the public to digest.

"At some point, having too much information might actually hurt, because it may start to confuse," Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told the Associated Press. He also suggested that the "Nutrition Facts" labels on packaged foods are more useful to scientists than the average consumer.

But I have to wonder, are we actually that easy to confuse? And when it comes to healthy eating, should we really be asking for less information? Considering that one in every four Canadians is obese, I’d think that the more information we have to make healthy diet choices, the better. Granted, the sodium and fibre content of a meal might not mean much to you if you’re not concerned about those things’but what can it hurt to include that information for people who are?

What do you want to know about the food you’re eating? Are restaurants providing too much information, or not enough?

Related:
‘ Quiz: Test your calorie smarts
‘ What healthy people really eat
‘ Top 10 dining-out tips for weight loss