This seems like a case of, “deal with it, you big rich babies.” The nation’s pizza giants are banning together to fight the proposed law requiring all chain restaurants to provide calorie contents on the menu. And the reason they’re stating as to why they won’t make the change? It will just be too difficult for them.
Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Papa John’s, Little Caesars, and other large pizza chains have joined together to form The American Pizza Community. Together they are arguing that pizzas are so varied from order-to-order that providing calorie content on their menus would be too taxing, and that their calorie content boards would be much larger than their actual menu board.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has heard similar complaints from other customizable restaurants. Their response was to provide the consumer with a calorie range. The American Pizza Community has an answer to that, too. They are stating that there can be a calorie swing of more than 1,000 calories based on people’s individual orders of extra cheese or meats. Again, it’s apparently just too much to ask out of these pizza players.
The American Pizza Community also has more issues with the pending law. They see the requirement to list calories for the entire pie as misleading as people only eat about 2.1 slices. And I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that even if the least health conscience person saw the tremendous amount of calories in the pizza they’re about to take home, they might reconsider their choices.
Apparently it’s just the pizza industry that has raised such a fuss about this new requirement. Everyone else has dealt with the challenges and complied. If it’s fear of losing business, Domino’s has tested the menu boards in their D.C. locations for the last year and have seen no major shift in sales. Perhaps they removed the ignorance from the bliss for some? Or maybe some consumers realized they’d need to adjust their dinner if they’re having pizza for lunch.
Knowing how many calories are in a pizza doesn’t mean we’ll stop eating it, it just means we might order less cheese or have a lighter meal later in the day to balance the calories. This seems wise and hopeful for our country, so why wouldn’t the pizza industry want to be a part of solving the obesity epidemic? Seems the members of The American Pizza Community are just afraid about losing money because honestly, a menu board is not that difficult to produce.
If they won’t tell you, we will. Check out our slideshow for a side-by-side comparison of calories and grams of fat per slice.
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