The Health Department is really serious about attacking obesity in NYC, what with all the soda and trans-fat banning they've been trying to enact over the past few years. And their newest weapon is a city-launched website listing the calories and nutritional information for popular restaurant food—so if you thought you could avoid the harsh truth/calorie listings for that Subway Tuscan chicken sandwich, think again sucker.
The site, called MenuStat.org, isn't really anything new, since there are plenty of calorie-counters out on the Interwebs to make you cry over your beloved grande Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte. But the city still hopes the website will help New Yorkers make better choices about the meals they're ordering, especially since the site lets you track calorie changes in menu items over time. "Foods eaten away from home account for nearly one-third of the calories Americans consume,” Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said in a statement on Thursday. “MenuStat is different from other nutrition information websites in that it provides ‘time-stamped’ nutritional information so users can assess changes over time and it provides easy-to-use tools for comparisons and analysis."
The site covers 35,000 items at 66 fast-food chains, so now you can see how much sodium goes into your favorite Wendy's chopped salad, and whether or not your Dominos delivery guy is killing you with fatty oil content. Delicious! Everything is terrible for you. The site only focuses on chain restaurants, though, so if you feel a burger fix need coming on and don't want to know about those 1,500 calories it'll cost you, stick with a mom-and-pop diner or something instead.
