1) Make a brochure for your area "Eating Better in NAME_OF_TOWN USA". List all the meals that have the lower calorie counts. Ask the local businesses to pay to be listed. Publish this bi-annually. Do this in every town you can.

2) Start an eating-healthy club that uses goal-setting and social shaming to help people lose or maintain their weight. Ask local businesses to sponsor membership fees in exchange for listing their lower-calorie menu items in your newsletter. Do this in 1000 towns. You'll need to find someone local to set this up. Start by contacting people in outgoing/enterprising professions such as real-estate.

More ideas?

Anyone who thinks this is a good idea should read Gary Taubes's review of the obesity literature in Good Calorie, Bad Calorie.

Our society appears to have become obese in large part from gorging ourselves on nutrient-depleted carbs (sugar, flour). This is just going to encourage people eat even less fat and more carbohydrates because of the calorie difference between fat and carbohydrate.

In Canada, nutritionists are heavily subsidized by the health system (the idea being that whatever the cost now certainly beats giving you a new heart in 20 years), and in fact nutrition courses are free for people in at-risk weight ranges.

This has worked out great for me personally - I used to be obese, and this type of education has been instrumental in allowing me to return to normal weight. In fact, given the depth of the obesity problem in America, I would think that this sort of education should be mandatory in the schooling system.

All the labeling in the world will do you no good until your population learns what the labels mean.

You are probably an exception because you were motivated to lose the weight in the first place. I suppose I'm one of the lucky skinny types that overweight people hate, but it seems to me that obesity is less about knowing what is in your food and simply eating less of it. If calories consumed are greater than calories burned, you gain weight.

While traveling around Europe, I happened to be at the same hostel as a Canadian doctor and he was more than happy to share lots of opinions with me -- especially about the U.S. health care system. So I asked him about weight and food. He said simply: People get fat because they eat too much. He also said, drink a lot of water and eat slower.

Later, I read an article that most people can't tell the difference between thirst and hunger. If you drink water when you feel hungry, often the hunger pangs go away. Of course that couldn't be true for me! So I tested it and sure enough, when I got hungry, I'd drink water and I wouldn't be hungry anymore.

Food is just like TV or cigarettes. It alleviates boredom. It gives us a good feeling to eat. We eat foods that are too dense with calories. Steak. Chicken. Twinkies. We are emotionally trained to think meat is better. In my rural area, vegetarians are weird. "You don't eat meat?? Why?!? OMG, I could never live without meat. What are you a sissy?"

But it isn't like that. Food is mostly emotional -- always has been. The reason all those women in the really old paintings are plump is because it was a sign of wealth. Rich kings could keep their women fat. Turns out they were the ones who could afford to pay painters as well, so we don't see all the skinny people who lived back then, but skinny is the norm, not the rule.

In the U.S., people think it is hard to be skinny, when the opposite is true -- it's hard to get fat.

Funny that your username is potatolicious and you're commenting on a food thread...

We intuitively know this, but we do not intuitively know what is good for us. Sure, you can insist that people ought to cook everything from scratch, but given modern lifestyles this is really just a moral high horse, and stands little chance of being realistic advice that will be followed. Not to mention that a lot of home cooking is dangerously unhealthy for you (meatloaf, anyone?).

The information that led to my dramatic weight loss wasn't some kind of holy secret grail, it was simply training on what foods I need, how much of it I need, how to read nutritional labels, and the common pitfalls (e.g., trading fat for sodium) that one ought to watch out for. Instead of harping "fries are bad for you!" the program taught me was was good for me, which in the end was infinitely more helpful. We publish a pretty good guide on food groups and recommended servings, but the whole system doesn't account for the world of processed, industrialized food we live in today. How good are those crackers? Unsalted? What does that mean? It can still be an invitation to a coronary unless you are smart about scrutinizing labels.

> "obesity is less about knowing what is in your food and simply eating less of it"

True and false. Most obese people (including myself) eat too much, but much of it has to do with what is being eaten as well. Trading fat for carbs, trading fat for sodium, etc etc, all contribute to bad health.

Also, nutritional education also opened my eyes on how bad certain foods are for you. We intuitively know burgers and fries are bad - but how bad? Even most "normals" don't know this quantitatively, and this knowledge has helped me avoid a lot of foods. There are shades of "bad for you", and it's important to know this. "Stop eating burgers and ice cream" is a moralistic stance to take, and technically correct, but ultimately unhelpful.

I'm not ready to try it myself, but I assume that it would be damn hard to get obese on a diet of steak and chicken.

I made some changes to my diet recently though, not because of the need to lose weight, but rather trying to optimise it for health.

I eliminated sugar from my diet, all grains, most of the starch. I try to get 60-70% of my calories from fats, mostly animal fats, 20-30% from proteins, rest from carbs - fresh fruit and vegetables. I eat 3 times a day strict, no snacks. I do not overeat, but I just eat till I'm not hungry. A lot of steak and chicken by the way. :)

So far in the first 3 months I lost 6kg without even trying - went from 82kg to 76kg at 178cm height - and 6cm from the waistline.

You're assuming that information availability is a problem yet your own example is different. In particular, you had information available while you were obese. You didn't stop being obese until you chose to act on the available information.

What makes you think that a significant number of other people are different?

Like you, most obese people know where to get the relevant information (if they don't have it already). How is making said information more available going to make them use it?

I didn't have the information. The fact that nutritional education is practically free in Canada is not a well-publicized fact (most Canadians, even obese ones, are probably unaware). This is akin to claiming that some obscure website has some important factoid, meaning it is "available" to everyone. Technically true, but it doesn't mean people will even be aware that this information is available to them.

Which is why I suggested making it mandatory in primary education - even subsidizing and making such services free means precious little if people aren't aware of the existence of such programs, or how powerful this information is.

The works of Shakespeare are available freely just about anywhere you care to look, but we still roll this into our education system because, frankly, people will probably not go out of their way to learn it otherwise. For the greater benefit of society, critical information that everyone should know should be in the educational curriculum.

This information isn't obscure or hard to find. In the US, we're inundated with it.

Do you really believe that you'd have acted sooner if someone had given you the book earlier?

Do you really want to hang your argument on "free"?

(1) It's actually quite easy to find free nutrition info if you're interested.

(2) It's even easier to find modestly priced info. I doubt that $5 makes a significant difference.

As far as Shakespeare in school goes, the only folks who remember it were the folks who were interested.

I saved the best for last. You've claimed that nutriton education would make a difference under the assumption that the US doesn't do it. It turns out that most US public schools do nutrion education. It doesn't seem to have the effect that you predicted....

FWIW, I'll bet that Canadian public schools also have nutrition education. Ig so, it sure made an impression on you....

Somewhat orthogonally, I think the government is overstepping its bounds.

That said, as someone who actually has a reasonable idea of what is "healthy," I'll be quite happy see what is in the food I may or may not be ordering. Say, for instance, what kind of oil is going into a salad, or searing some fish...

Also, what about specials? Have some fish left over from the weekend and want to run a special? Well figure out your exact portions, calculate calories, and reprint your menus. Oh wait, the fish went bad while you were doing all of that. Sorry. Try again next week.

This certainly doesn't apply to your corner mom and pop shop where serving sizes and contents vary by the plate.

This is already required in NYC for chains. It's kind of nice to know that the Five Guys burger and fries I'm about to throw down for lunch satisfies all of the calorie and fat limits recommended for the day in just one meal. At the same time, is there a need for government to mandate this?

I think it's a good tool for people who are looking to be a bit smarter about their consumption habits. Most people understand that the food they're eating isn't good, but I think the problem is that few understand just how bad it actually is. High fat/calorie restaurant chains have little incentive to do something like this, so maybe the .gov getting involved is needed.

In this case, it seems to be less a case of the federal government vs personal responsibility, so much as industry pushing for the federal law to avoid having to deal with emerging individual state and local laws. I'm assuming the industry might also be planning to use the labeling to help defend against some of the lawsuits that are being brought against them by people with obesity related disorders.