A very, very, bad idea

Something has the galloping housewife riled, skinny bitch, and as usual she’s going to rant about it.

If you live in the UK and you’ve been out for a meal recently, you’ve possibly noticed that menus have a new addition. A calorie count.

Yep, that’s right, you can’t chow down on your favourite cheeseburger, have a catch up over pasta with your mates, treat yourself to desert on date night, without being assaulted by how much energy you’re going to have to burn off to pay for it.

This is a bad idea on so many levels.

For a start, anyone who has done the Skinny Bitch Code will tell you, our calorie consumption has three fifths of fuck all to do with how much weight we lose. It’s got even less to do with how much weight we’ve gained and it’s another step down in impact on where we store the weight we’ve gained and the associated health risks of that.

Secondly, no one needs a side order of guilt with their dinner. Guilt increases stress which increases cortisol which is the key hormone in preventing fat burning. We lose weight and increase our metabolism by eating well and moving well consistently. It’s the 20 other meals we’ve had that week that make a difference, not the one night we relax. Furthermore, our physiology dictates that we need to indulge every now and then. We were designed with occasional feast in mind. It’s good for our hormones, it’s good for our metabolism, it’s good for our mental state.

Finally, can you imagine what seeing those numbers does to someone who is suffering, or who has ever suffered, from an eating disorder? They have lost so much of their lives to those numbers, seeing them could be just the trigger they need to derail a healthy relationship with food and consumption.

For now there’s not much we can do. Writing to your MP is a start. As is requesting a calorie free menu when you go out. Forewarned is forearmed and all that, so if you think you’re likely to be triggered, know about this before you choose to dine out. Perhaps have a friend ring ahead and ensure your needs will be protected.

There is no doubt that the western world is facing an obesity epidemic, and this is having a global impact on health outcomes. Putting calorie counts on menus is just going to make it worse.