Sam's Kitchen

Block you ears, I can feel a rant coming on. 

Apparently, a group of 20 so called ‘industry specialists’ have gotten their heads together and believe the idea to enforce all restaurants to put the exact calorific and nutritional value of each dish on every menu is a jolly good one. As you might expect, I beg to differ….

Mandatory nutritional labelling on menus would be the death toll to fresh food restaurants. Not putting a finer point on it but I have on average 16 individual dishes on my menu most which change every lunchtime and evening dependent on local produce.  Said produce, such as a whole lemon sole, don’t actually come in identical weights. Secondly, I cook to order and, shockingly, there are occasions when I put down my micrometer and add ingredients by eye.  Ok, so I could trim each lobster down to the same weight – sorry madam, I had to cut the last two fifths off as it was oversized -and yes, I suppose if a customer requested additional tartare sauce we could ring the food police so the offending person gets struck off the NHS for inciting obesity.

If I was required by law to quote calorific values with the threat of prosecution if it were incorrect, there are only two options open to me.  Continue to produce individual meals but with a nutritionalist and testing unit next to me to monitor each dish, then inform each individual customer of the nutritional content in return for a signed decloration of acceptance,  or, buy it all in vac packed portioned controlled mass produced packets with a longer ambient shelf life than my own and use it’s wraper as the menu. 

Even the Americans have taken this on board and have limited it to chain restaurants.  The likes of the burger giants, tavern steak houses and supermarket canteens, all of which have multiple outlets sourcing their food from one central mass food producer.  The sorts of places that we’re advised not to eat in too often and yet the government now want to turn every restaurant into. If I was a cynic, I’d wonder if this isn’t just a ploy to get us to all die young thereby ending the pension problem and the euthanasia issue with one well aimed frozen vegi nugget, whilst outwardly appearing to actually care about our health.

Surely, as customers we don’t need this.  If you have a dietary requirement, tell the waiting staff to tell the chef!  He/she, having made the dish, should be able to tell you not only what is in it, but might just be able to adapt to suit.  If they can’t, don’t eat there.  Where does it stop?  Do you really want your pint of beer to have a calorific label on it or your cream liqueur to admit the number of stabilisers contained within it?  At the end of the day we all know the chocolate cream gateaux is probably going to be more fattening then the fresh fruit salad – and if it isn’t, I for one wouldn’t want to know the amount of  chemical sweeteners I’d be shovelling down my throat!!!  

So, if you are still with me after reading the tirade, I suspect you might be interested in who the ‘industry specialists’ are.  Well, every single one of them are huge catering outlets all of which have central processing units.  Hmmm, I wonder, could they possibly be biased?