Nutritional Information On Restaurant Menus

I had my first experience with seeing nutritional information on a restaurant menu today. I know some places have this sort of thing on their menus, but I've never actually seen it for myself.

We went out to Mimi's Cafe this afternoon after running a few errands, and as I was skimming through the menu, I saw their Fresh And Fit section. I instantly fell in love with this option. I had always loved the idea of restaurants adding nutritional information to their menus, but once I actually saw it, it just made my opinion stronger. The nutritional information isn't done in an "in your face" kind of way at all. I think the type of people who are against this type of idea are those that don't like to actually see the damage their doing to their diet. They don't want to know how many calories they're eating and don't want to feel guilty about having eaten it later.

Mimi's doesn't have nutritional information for their entire menu, just for their Fresh and Fit section. I personally would love to see all the nutritional information, for every dish. As it is now, I go to the Calorie King web site to see if the restaurant we're going to has any of their meals listed. Either that or I will go to their personal web site and see if they list any there. If they don't I'm assuming the meals are high in calories and fat. But I could be wrong.

At Mimi's Cafe I had the Sweet and Sour Chicken. I would have thought that the sodium count for that meal would be high. I was shocked to see the sodium was only 209 mg. That meal was only 555 calories, 19 grams of total fat, and 3 grams saturated fat. Not too bad at all! And it was pretty tasty. I was a little hungry a few hours later, while everyone else I had lunch with was still somewhat full. So I grabbed a nectarine and that was perfect.

So, yes, I am definitely all for having nutritional information on restaurant menus! I hope this becomes standard for most restaurants. And if not, I hope they at least post the facts on their web sites. I know it takes a lot of pressure off when I know exactly what I want, and not have to guess at which meal is the healthier option.

What do you think? Would you like to see nutritional information on restaurant menus? Or would you rather not know the amount of calories you're eating?