Calorie counts a-comin'

Under a new law, chain restaurants in Calorie-fornia will have to post calorie counts and grams of fat starting in 2011, and provide brochures with that information starting July 1, 2009. But some restaurants are getting a head start.

I ate at a Chick-fil-A in Ontario recently and nutritional information for every menu item was printed on the tray liner. Not that it did me a lot of good, since the liner came under the food I'd already ordered, but it made for good lunchtime reading. If I'd gone for the chargrilled chicken instead of the regular breaded chicken, I'd have saved 130 calories and cut the fat from 16 grams to 3.

Did you know their cole slaw has 32 grams of fat? That's only one gram less than the Cookies and Cream milk shake, the fattiest item on the menu! Waffle fries, with 13 fat grams, are actually better for you than the slaw. Methinks some tinkering with the recipe is in order.

The same week, I also visited -- on the opposite end of the valley, and the fussiness meter -- Le Pain Quotidien in Claremont, where they're now putting calorie counts on the menu. Very helpful, except in the case of beverages. A note explains that calories for beverages range from "5 to 195." I'd like one closer to 5, please!