Doubling Down.

A lot of jokes have been crafted over the last week or so with KFC’s vaguely evil chicken-cheese-bacon-chicken sandwich as the punchline, but one of the things that’s so surprising about the reaction to it is that, nutritionally speaking, there really isn’t anything about it that is especially outrageous as far as fast food goes. 540 calories/32 grams of fat/1380 mgs of sodium? A vegetarian burrito from Chipotle, topped with cheese and guacamole, has a lot more calories and fat.* A Maoz falafel sandwich, and stuffed with eggplant, feta cheese, and hummus can easily creep into Double Down territory. These  are chains who notably trumpet their fare as a fresher (and implicitly healthier) alternative to McDonald’s and the like.

I’ve been thinking about this nutritional tut-tutting on the Double Down in the wake of some dispiriting results on an initiative implemented by Mayor Bloomberg here in NYC which required chain restaurants to display how many calories the items contain on the menu. The idea was that better-informed customers would make healthier decisions. But a study found that the plan didn’t have much effect.

The study, by several professors at New York University and Yale, tracked customers at four fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken — in poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.

It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.

But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.

The findings, to be published Tuesday in the online version of the journal Health Affairs come amid the spreading popularity of calorie-counting proposals as a way to improve public health across the country.

“I think it does show us that labels are not enough,” Brian Elbel, an assistant professor at the New York University School of Medicine and the lead author of the study, said in an interview.

Like a lot of people, I thought this was a worthwhile initiative. But it seems like a fundamental problem with a this effort is that the numbers, in and of themselves, don’t mean a lot or explain much to a lot of people. How much of your daily intake is 600 calories? That kinda depends, doesn’t it? It might be more useful to know how much fat, sugar and sodium was in a given item, but that stuff isn’t displayed on the menus. But even including those would call for context: Twenty-three grams of fat! Well, what kind of fat are we talking about? And so many people will simply eyeball it. A lot of times, the appearance of healthfulness — like say, lots of fresh vegetables on your lunch salad — can camouflage all manner of dietary profligacy (dressing, cheese, etc.); it seems the Double Down’s biggest crime is actually looking the part.

(Aside: I’d guess another part of the dilemma is that so few people actually know how much we eat in a given day. A friend of mine who was about to embark on a weightloss regimen was inquiring as to what she should do to start. When it was suggested that she get a sense of how many calories she consumed each day to see what she could cut out, she guessed she ate about 1200. It was very unlikely that that was true; that’s the kind of caloric intake usually reserved for people who are dieting very aggressively — and maybe dangerously — or who are malnourished. Likewise, the nutritional labeling on food products is based on a 2000=calorie diet, which may seem like a lot of nutritional breathing room until you realize what an actual serving size of a given product is, or if you regularly drink soda or grab a drink at Starbucks. )

Thinking on this, though, it shouldn’t be surprising that the calorie-posting plan came up wanting. Large-scale efforts to combat obesity-related illnesses will be stymied by the array of obstacles for poor and lower-income people, who are of course, much more likely to be obese at the same time they are much more likely to be undernourished. At the risk of belaboring the point, it’s much easier to live a healthier lifestyle if you live in a place that encourages walking, where there is an abundance of healthful food options, and if you have the time and money to be active — you’ll end up making healthier choices by default. The fast food labeling might even be besides the point in such places, since those communities are less likely to have fast food spots to begin with.

But if you live in a world in which the Double Down is more accessible than fresh chicken breasts, or if you work a grueling job where cooking at home becomes a burden in itself, or if you’re  poor and a big factor in what you decide to eat is to get the most calories you can for as little money as possible, or you live in a place that is so physically unsafe that physical activity is not an option, then prominently displaying calories on a takeout menu is going to have little effect on community health. Despite all the talk about willpower and personal agency when it comes to diet and fitness, it’s worth remembering that very few of us become healthy or unhealthy in a vacuum.

*Via.

G.D.

G.D.

Gene "G.D." Demby is the founder and editor of PostBourgie. In his day job, he blogs and reports on race and ethnicity for NPR's Code Switch team.
G.D.
  • Val

    There are communities with thousands of people living in them that have no grocery stores. But these same communities have dozens of fast food places. How can good health win in that situation?

    If the government is serious about promoting good health then it should start with helping communities open food cooperatives, since major food retailers hate doing business in poor communities.

    And speaking of food; Food, Inc. will be on PBS tonight.

  • Scipio Africanus

    Hearty co-sign.

    Another thing that’s been mentioned is sometimes people with higher incomes may be able to derive joy and pleasure from things that their money gives them access to, which poorer people often cannot: nice stuff, the ability to take vacations, golf and other more expensive sports, etc. For people with less money, unhealthy food can actually be a major source of pleasure, especially since it’s cheap, and as you mentioned, it’s also the most available type of food in many poor neighborhoods.

  • Joshunda

    I think the point you made about the Double Down actually looking the part is a good one. Part of the reason it’s easy to pick on a sandwich that has two pieces of fried chicken as its substitute bun is that it is a symbol of excess.

    But I remember having virtually no access to fresh fruits and veggies in the Bronx when I lived in a poor neighborhood. It took me several years of getting comfortable with fresh foods and how to make them (which I have time and resources to commit to, but it’s still sometimes a struggle) to get to the point where I had a sense of what my caloric intake is/was.

    We also live in a world where people seem really uncomfortable admitting to orthorexia, or an obsession with eating healthy foods, which is the other extreme.

  • There’s a major problem with this study, dudes: no control group. Since they only sampled from the poor neighborhoods, how do we know the same shit is going down in the middle class or affluent neighborhoods (as far as mistaking the calorie count)?

    My point is, based on the design, we don’t know if this is a problem with poor peoples’ decision making and information, or a national problem where everyone is afflicted, but poor people bear the brunt given their paltry food options.

    • blackink

      This is a great point. Because as someone of generally middle-class means and someone who tries to stay reasonably informed about the food I put into my body, I’m almost always flummoxed when I’m confronted by choices at restaurants that don’t offer nutritional information.

      I remember, a couple weeks ago, thinking that I was making a good decision by choosing this salad over another option at TGIF’s. And I was totally floored when I realized that, after looking at the info online (afterward), that I was completely wrong. Obviously this is a personal anecdote, but I’m sure I’m not the only one this has happened to.

      And remember, not everyone has the time or means to figure out all this stuff. Calories, fat grams, sodium, etc etc. It can be frustrating. In the end, I could someone saying, “bump it, lemme get that joint with bacon and cheese.”

      So yeah. These problems aren’t just limited to poor folks.

      But dope post, regardless.

    • quadmoniker

      Yeah, also, I think another study showed that people do better when the calories and fat levels are put in context. But yeah, to blackink’s point, too, that’s what I hate about people who say it’s about personal responsibility. A lot of shit that looks healthy, like a salad, isn’t because of the way certain restaurants prepare it. How are we supposed to know the difference if people don’t tell us?

  • @Joshunda –

    But I remember having virtually no access to fresh fruits and veggies in the Bronx when I lived in a poor neighborhood. It took me several years of getting comfortable with fresh foods and how to make them (which I have time and resources to commit to, but it’s still sometimes a struggle) to get to the point where I had a sense of what my caloric intake is/was.

    This, this, and this. I still remember the day I discovered (freshly in my twenties mind) that spinach did not just come in a can. There was this thing called fresh spinach, that looked and tasted totally different. And good point on the learning part – getting comfortable with food that rots, that tastes kind of weird on its own (especially since our tastebuds are so attuned to salt, sugar, and fat), learning how to prepare these foods (what the fuck is eggplant? is it supposed to look like that?) – all these traits have to be learned. And they aren’t exactly the most cost effective option when there is a week or so where you can’t cook, compared to boxes of things that are ready made, frozen, or chemically stabilized.

    • Joshunda

      I’m so relieved that I’m not the only person who was so addicted to Doritos and Little Debbie snacks that I didn’t know Spinach wasn’t born in cans. It’s kind of insidious, but I was just watching Food Inc last night, getting flashbacks while watching a family of four talk about whether they should by broccoli for $1.49 a lbs. or get the $1 double cheeseburger, which would make them feel “full” instead. And girl, yeah re: What the fuck is eggplant. I have not ever purchased an artichoke for this very reason. Wouldn’t know the first thing about how to get it out of its fancy green outfit and I don’t want to hurt myself in the process.

  • We also must consider the possibility that KFC is lying to us: City Rag seems to think the Double Down has at least double the calories that are being sold to us.

    http://cityrag.com/2010/04/kentucky-fried-bullshit-2/

    • Russ

      Someone should just set up a bomb calorimeter and burn one of these guys that should make it clear how many calories are in it (upper bound). I’d do it myself but I am not good at bench work.

    • i’ve always wondered how we go about determining how accurate the stated nutritional info in a given product is. this is really annoying, fam.

    • quadmoniker

      Yeah, I agree that it has to be more. Non-breaded and fried chicken breasts would be about 300 calories themselves. Add cheese and mayonnaise, and you don’t even have room for the bacon, “sauce” and fried-ness in the alleged 540.

    • Scipio Africanus

      I ca’t read that link, but I do get the intuition that any sandwich that looks like the double down probably *should* contain more calories.

      The thing is, the calorie counts for everything else on their menu seem to make perfect sense. That would mean KFC is trying to trick people into thinking this is a healthy sandwich (and risk some sort of fine from the USDA, or whatever regulatory body is in charge of calorie counts). But this sandwich almost comically appears to be the opposite of healthy, so that logic fails really badly. It would make more sense if they were pushing some kind of healthy-looking salad that was in actuality high in calories.

      I’d be interested to see if KFC responds to an incredulous public by really acounting for the stated calorie count. I have a sneaking suspicion, for the reasons above, that they *are* telling the truth.

      • quadmoniker

        It could one of those things where the KFC approved recipe contains only 540, but the way employees make the sandwich at each franchise is different. Like, a serving of the sauce is supposed to be a teaspoon, but no one really puts only a teaspoon.