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Calorie Info Now Following You Down Into the Subway
By
John Del Signore
Published Oct 6, 2008
Modified Oct 6, 2008
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By
John Del Signore
Published Oct 6, 2008
Modified Oct 6, 2008
Share
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Not satisfied with making sure New Yorkers know exactly how fat they're going to get off food at chain restaurants, the Health Department is taking its calorie crusade underground with a new educational campaign that launches today. The posters confirm your worst suspicions about fast food and also expose deceptively harmless snacks, like a perfectly innocent-looking apple raisin muffin, for the high-calorie frauds they are. That cute little muffin packs 470 calories—nearly a quarter of your daily allowance, which officials put at 2,600 calories a day for adult men, and 2,000 for adult women. (Sorry, ladies.)
The ad campaign is an extension of the city's recently-enacted law requiring restaurants with more than 15 locations nationwide to prominently display their calorie information on all food and beverages. With this new nutrition hectoring in the transit system, there's now one less place for obese New Yorkers to bliss out in ignorance. (Up next, mandatory calorie-count tattoos!) The Health Department says the $82,000 campaign, lasting through January, will help reduce the number of people who suffer from obesity by 150,000 over the next five years, preventing more than 30,000 cases of diabetes. Of course, nothing—nothing—will ever stop people from stinking up entire subway cars with Chinese dinners, buckets of fried chicken, and McDonald's fries.
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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