A Receipt Worth Keeping
A company by the name of Nutricate is selling an ingenious concept to fast-food restaurants — receipts with nutrition information on them.
I think it’s a wonderful complement to calorie labeling on fast-food restaurants menus. By itself, I consider it inefficient, as it presents nutrition information after it has been purchased.
For those looking to track some of their intake more easily, it sure is helpful. Of course, I wish irrelevant categories like “carbs” and “protein” would be replaced by more important ones like “sodium” and “trans fat”.
I actually really appreciate the fact that the Nutricate receipt goes beyond calorie counts; the message is one of overall health, rather than simply weight.
Would you at all be interested in having chain restaurants (from McDonald’s and Au Bon Pain to Chipotle and Applebee’s) provide Nutricate receipts? Why or why not?
Alicia said on January 8th, 2010
I think it’s helpful, although agree that it would be better to know prior to the purchase. It’s a case of better late than never.
However, I disagree with you about carbohydrates being irrelevant. For many, carb info is not important, but I work with many patients who have type 1 diabetics, and for them carb info is probably most important, as they are often dosing insulin off carb content. It’s extremely helpful when restaurants provide accurate carb info. I would generally like to see calories, carbs, sat fat, trans fat, and sodium on any labels.
Andy Bellatti said on January 8th, 2010
Alicia,
You are absolutely right in terms of the validity of carbohydrate content for diabetes patients.
My concern with carbohydrate labeling is that it gives people who do not have diabetes a reason to think that they should worry about the grams of carbohydrates they have each day, and leads to completely irrational thinking. I find that so many people worry about 5 grams of carbohydrates but don’t pay any mind to exorbitant sodium amounts.
Jim said on January 8th, 2010
Regarding receiving the nutritional information after you’ve ordered it, there is a lot of info on the receipt that can help the customer make a better decision next time.
Burgerville (a Pacific NW chain) has this in one of their restaurants in Portland. I’ve been there a few times and especially liked the “Did You Know” section. I ordered a milkshake the first time (something like 650 cals) and it told me that if I ordered a smoothie (yogurt instead of ice cream) it was around 300 calories less. So I changed my order the next time (although I should be ordering a Diet Coke really
.
I guess the bottom line is, if people learn something new and change their behavior for next time, things are moving in the right direction. It’s a pretty cool product and I wouldn’t mind seeing more of it.
Oh yeah, it also shows you the net cals if you customize your order, which is pretty cool. I don’t like mayo and it showed how many fewer calories my sandwich had as a result. That’s something the menu boards won’t tell me.
Andy Bellatti said on January 8th, 2010
Thanks for sharing those details, Jim. I think it’s a neat innovation that can be a wonderful complement to mandatory calorie labeling.