EDITORIAL: Irish chefs fight the Nanny State

The aggressive and paternalistic Nanny State is an unfortunate feature of our times. But encouraging pockets of resistance remain committed to fighting back against those who claim to know what’s best for us.

The Irish Times reported this month that many of the country’s leading chefs have announced their intention to ignore a proposed law forcing restaurants and pubs to list calorie counts on menus.

“I’ll pay whatever fine I have to, but will never put calories on my menu,” Wade Murphy, who owns a popular County Limerick restaurant, told the paper. The owner of two two-star Michelin eateries in Dublin concurred. “We won’t be doing it,” he told the Times, “as stated many times before, we will never put calories on menus.”

A trade association notes that the move — done in the name of fighting obesity — will cost the average restaurant $10,000, a large amount for mom-and-pop enterprises.

Award-winning Irish chef Gaz Smith lashed out at the plan in an op-ed for the Irish Daily Mail. He accused supporters of having “no real thought on implementation, the realities of the costs and time of getting it accurate and the burden it will place on smaller independent restaurants and cafes that are already swamped in regulations, legislation, VAT increases and the ever-soaring insurance costs.”

The United States imposed a similar law in 2010, but implementation was delayed until 2018. Amendments eventually exempted smaller food establishments, but millions of business still fall under its purview, including movie theaters and convenience stores. The measure led to the usual absurdities, particularly for pizza chains, where customers may face millions of potential topping permutations.

There’s also scant evidence that calorie counts on menus influences consumer behavior. “Research consistently shows menu calorie labeling is not an effective tool for combating obesity,” Baylen Linnekin of Reason magazine notes.

Supporters of the Nanny State argue calorie counts provide diners with the information necessary to make informed choices about their nutritional habits. But the data is hardly being suppressed: Scores of websites and publications already publicize calorie counts for restaurant offerings. There’s no reason to impose government mandates that treat consumers like idiots incapable of thinking for themselves or making their own culinary decisions. Do we need federal bureaucrats also regulating portion sizes?

If restaurants, cafes and other eateries want to provide calorie information to their customers, they should be free to do so, of course. And if patrons find such menu information helpful in making choices, they are free to direct their business to eateries that provide it. But here’s to the Irish resistance. Let the marketplace, rather than government busybodies, sort it all out.