Tiny sugar spoons are popping up on NYC fast-food menus

https://gothamist.com/news/tiny-sugar-spoons-are-popping-up-on-nyc-fast-food-menus-youre-being-warned

by nodumbideas • 9 months ago

39 82 9 months ago

Jarmsy• 9 months ago

As a non American some of these numbers are just mind boggling. Only putting the warning on drinks with more than 50g of added sugar, a 'medium' Dr Pepper with 67g of sugar and a large with 96g.

neom• 9 months ago

I'm a Canadian and we're equally obsessed with sugar, it's not just the Americans.

It's not just the Americans at all, in fact: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/sugar-con... // https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d...

I'm saying this as a general reminder: Sugar intake is a major issue globally.

rkomorn2• 9 months ago

I think they mean they find the allowances before you get warned about sugar shockingly high.

quesera3• 9 months ago

Sugar content is a function of serving size, of course.

The astonishing thing to me is that we can sell a 32 fl oz (950 mL) drink as "large", instead of "a week's supply of empty calories that you should never consume in one sitting".

grishka• 9 months ago

I distinctly remember having my mind blown by fast food drink sizes when I visited the US. A "small" there felt like what we would call "large" here in Russia. Our small soda is usually 300 ml at most.

ThrowawayTestr• 9 months ago

Oh, does soda not exist in your country?

discomrobertul8• 9 months ago

Sizes tend to be a lot smaller. One poster above said a large soda in the USA is almost one litre! In the UK it's roughly half that size at 500ml.

As the sugar level is directly proportionate to the overall volume, it can be quite surprising how much sugar there is when you aren't used to such massive servings.

noelwelsh• 9 months ago

In the UK there is a "sugar tax" on soft drinks: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/sugar-ta...

The stats say it has greatly decreased sugar consumption in soft drinks. From my point-of-view (someone who rarely drinks soft drinks) it seems that most soft drinks now mix artificial sweeteners and sugar, so effectively all soft drinks are now "diet" varieties.

Swizec2• 9 months ago

Only putting the warning on drinks with more than 50g of added sugar

Wait till you see all the tricks food producers use to avoid the added sugar label. “grape juice concentrate” is not an added sugar if the food is grapes flavored, for example.

Increasingly marketed-as-healthier foods don’t include any sugar at all. Yet half the ingredients are various sugars. Sometimes as cheeky as “sugarcane concentrate”

parineum3• 9 months ago

My immediate thought while reading the article was both "What counts as 'added' sugar?" and "Who is making this 'daily recommended amount of added sugars'?"

Of course, all of this information is already available via nutrition facts for most sold foods.

The root problem here doesn't seem to be the availability of information, I expect it to be more about the availability of time and effort to spend on priority of personal health. I don't think the issue is that people don't know that food isn't bad for them, it's that their health is lower priority than their immediate needs of feeding themselves and their families.

If anything, as you point out, this seems to be a better way for food manufacturers to bend the rules to avoid the logo and make something seem healthier than it is rather than giving more information to consumers. The _fact_ (X Grams of Sugar) is on the package but the logo indicates that the food contains more than x grams of "recommended" "added" sugars, two things that can be misunderstood and/or gamed.

mikeodds• 9 months ago

Treat yourself to a sonic shake with your sonic fast food meal instead.

Only 146g of sugar, 26g of saturated fat and 1100 calories.

https://foods.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/sonic/banana-...

psini• 9 months ago

Crazy how you probably wouldn't get a slice of cheesecake factory cheesecake on the side of your Macdonald's meal; but never think twice about a medium soda that has the same amount of added sugar

huvarda• 9 months ago

Reminds me of that one post that goes "Whenever I see those comparisons of sugar between donuts and soda it just seems to me that donuts are healthier than I thought"

cultofmetatron2• 9 months ago

thats because the "ier" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting. getting fat from all that sugar is the least of your concerns. it also ages you rapidly and makes you more likely to have ongoing systemic inflammation. I'm back in the states for the last two weeks and the difference between people here and when I was aboard is jarring.

firefax2• 9 months ago

At my healthiest weight used to get a quad espresso and an artisinal creme filled donut each morning at one point.

It got eyebrows, but it was also a third of the calories of a large Starbucks caffinated milkshake (and that's what they are -- addictive milkshakes).

Less liquid, less piss, more code, I'm surprised more hackers don't seek out quality espresso instead of these weird XTREME energy drinks.

Anyways yes, a donut is about 500 calories, a big soda or coffee with fillings is much much more.

xnx• 9 months ago

Also crazy that a lot of what people consider "coffee" is basically a large milkshake.

thaumasiotes4• 9 months ago

Well, come on. Have you tasted coffee? There's a reason its commercial form is all sugar and no coffee.

Finnucane• 9 months ago

Or more. CF's nutritional info says their cheesecakes range from about 60 to 120 g of sugar per slice, plus 60 to 120 g of saturated fat.

pengaru• 9 months ago

McFlurry has entered the chat

p00ter2• 9 months ago

It's crazy how some people still eat McDonalds and drink soft drinks at all.

etiennebausson• 9 months ago

The amount of the fine made me laugh.

200$? What is that, a fine for ants?

trgn• 9 months ago

this shouldn't exist at all. if people don't know that junk food is unhealthy, no amount of adding signage is going to correct that.

apparent2• 9 months ago

I could see how it might be helpful when people compare meals. For example, maybe a hamburger doesn't have added sugars, but a salad does (because the dressing is so sweet). A customer might order the burger instead, or order the salad but swap to a different dressing.

There have been some restaurant foods that I knew weren't healthy but didn't realize how unhealthy they were until I looked at recipes for how to make them myself.

apparent2• 9 months ago

Chain restaurants that don’t comply with the new rules will be subject to $200 fines starting next year, the health department said.

How often will the $200 fine be assessed? Unless it's daily, it won't likely make a difference.

raincole• 9 months ago

It should be like $20 per meal sold instead of $200.

jasonthorsness• 9 months ago

Maybe they should give you real tiny spoons to add the sugar yourself instead

MisterTea• 9 months ago

They used to offer these spoons at McDonald's but they were used for booger sugar and became unpopular.

dylan6042• 9 months ago

Why is this targeted at chains with 15+ locations? Is the soda in a single location mom&pop restaurant any less bad for you? No. Why is this not just a blanket rule for the city?

bobbylarrybobby• 9 months ago

Probably viewed as too onerous for small businesses to comply.

dylan6042• 9 months ago

How is this onerous? You update the website your QR code points to. It's not like you have to print up new menus. If you still have menus, just print up a sheet of stickers that you smash onto the menu. Malicious compliance can be used

zamadatix2• 9 months ago

Small local laws like this tend to gain a lot less traction when they pile up to be a larger (relative) load on smaller, local-only businesses. Rather than not have anything pass, people prefer to pass something which still has 80% of the benefit but only 20% the resistance. Only targeting large chains, at least initially, is a way to move that needle over getting nothing out of principle.

If successful/popular, then it's much easier to pass full coverage later.

OptionOfT2• 9 months ago

For the same reason you only see calorie counts on restaurants with > x locations.

Since their menu is the same the study to get the calorie counts is not as costly per location.

red-iron-pine2• 9 months ago

a massively busy local chain may serve 10k people a week in NYC

a big chain like McD's may literally sling millions of burgers in a similar timeframe.

it's also a lot easier to enforce this with a single corporate entity then track down hundreds of one-off mom-and-pop locations.

0_____0• 9 months ago

Tiny label with a symbol most people will not immediately grok? Please...

Mexico has big labels saying things like "EXCESO DE GRASA" o "EXCESO DE AZÚCAR" which make it super clear what they're warning about. I used them to find the high-calorie snacks for hiking :)

bschwindHN3• 9 months ago

America needs better unsweetened beverage options. Japan and Taiwan (and probably other Asian countries too, I haven't been) have a crazy good selection of teas and tea-like drinks that taste great and have zero sugar. Unfortunately, to someone who drinks soda every day, those probably taste bitter and "nasty", it takes some time to recalibrate your tastebuds and appreciate their flavor. But the options need to exist in good quantities first before it can become a common choice, and I'm sure soda is more profitable so we're probably never getting out of this...

zamadatix2• 9 months ago

I'm convinced diet Coke is to blame for a lot of people in the US thinking no sugar drink = awful drink, preventing interest in looking into it further. Mostly because of the taste, but also because branding it as "diet" in the name was a bad marketing choice in the long run. God bless those that like the Diet variant more than normal Coke, but I swear more people think e.g. Dr Pepper Zero Sugar tastes better than Dr Pepper!

Once over the hump of assuming it's the sugar that makes soda tastes good, I think it opens up a lot higher chance of trying other sugar free drinks which can be even healthier (while still tasting amazing). At least it did for n=1.

robmccoll• 9 months ago

I'm more concerned about added sugar in other foods. If you're trying to keep your sugar intake down, cutting sugary sodas seems pretty obvious to me, but remembering to be careful about bread or tomato paste or anything else you might eat because some brands or restaurants add a bunch of extra sugar is really a pain.

bschwindHN3• 9 months ago

The good thing is, if your palate has gotten used to unsweetened beverages, you can easily tell when bread or a sauce has sugar in it when it shouldn't. Or maybe I'm weirdly sensitive to sugar, I dunno.

returningfory2• 9 months ago

I think it's already happening. In bougie parts of the US (fancy parts of NYC and LA at least), artisanal lower sugar sodas are becoming ubiquitous.

E.g. https://drinkolipop.com/

jerlam3• 9 months ago

Olipop might have pretty high distribution, I see them in normal supermarkets and places like Target and Costco now. I don't live in either of the places you mention.

However, Olipop has sugar alcohols as a sweetener, which give me gastrointestinal distress after only two cans. Soiling yourself is a good disincentive for drinking a lot of soda.

bschwindHN3• 9 months ago

Ehh those are a crutch, I'm talking zero sugar at all. It doesn't have to be bougie or artisanal, just a good variety of tea at affordable prices would be a good start. Making it "fancy" and expensive just defeats the purpose.

k3nx• 9 months ago

Agreed. Here in the US if they say "sugar free" there is usually some other sugar replacement. I don't need dried mango's with added sugar or sweetener, they are sweet enough as is. I'd love to see an unsweetened option. As someone who is trying to remove sugar from my diet anything sweet is almost too much for me.

Ferret7446• 9 months ago

America has water and black coffee and tea. There is no lack, people simply don't choose it

guywithahat• 9 months ago

It's interesting how they're passing this after the public failure of the soda ban, one would think they'd be looking into more productive areas of legislation. I don't drink sugar and generally don't go out, but this doesn't seem to be solving consumer problems

pessimizer• 9 months ago

It's fake work. You do some social restriction (usually on food) that follows upper middle-class aesthetics, the media cheers, and dinner parties are supportive. Even better if you specifically target it towards the poor*, or food that only poor people eat.

This, for example, is targeted towards chains. If every restaurant you eat at has fewer than 15 locations, it doesn't exist. Where do upper-middle class people eat?

-----

[*] like the fake work that RFK, Jr. is doing trying to make it impossible to buy soda and snack foods on SNAP. Only positive press he's gotten from NYT etc.. Yes, make those poor people eat better! But somehow also fat acceptance.

jerlam3• 9 months ago

The big, real problems aren't really solvable on a city level. And opposition can quash any obvious solutions.

Unfortunately this does lead to a lot of small, weak rules being passed because elected officials have to "do something" in order to stay in the public eye to get reelected.

parineum3• 9 months ago

We've got to protect our phony bologna jobs!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTmfwklFM-M

RHSeeger• 9 months ago

The menu image that list 140 cal for drinks, and then includes drinks with 0 cal, seems weird.

ge962• 9 months ago

Here I was thinking a spoon literally made out of sugar like the salt fork

EvanAnderson• 9 months ago

Yeah-- same here. I assumed it was some kind of product to circumvent a regulation re: sugar content in menu items.

ryanschaefer• 9 months ago

He’s back making that exact product now

ge962• 9 months ago

I personally think it's gross the idea of licking something then setting it aside to lick it again later without washing it, but maybe you do wash it. Also maybe way too salty.

tsumnia• 9 months ago

I remember reading this in 2012: https://globalyouth.wharton.upenn.edu/articles/big-gulp-new-...

I look forward to the counter-ad campaign from Big Gulp.

AnotherGoodName2• 9 months ago

I personally love the star ratings au/nz have on food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Star_Rating_System

It’s a raw calculation between 0 to 5 stars on how healthy the food is. It’s basically calories (with some bias to the type of calories) divided by fibre+protein. These days you don’t see products in supermarkets or chain restaurants without the stars shown on the front of the box. It’s become an expectation of customers. Even snacks like tim tams clearly show .5 stars on the front indicating they are high in calories for how filling they are.

It works well. A high protein and high fibre food can indeed have high calories and score well. But you know what? High protein and high fibre foods are extremely filling. So fair enough!

Obviously any such system is high level and misses all the micronutrients etc. but in general calories divided by fibre+protein provides a reasonable guide. One behavioural thing i’ve seen come out of this is parents allowing children to pick snacks and cereals themselves provided it’s 4+ stars. This usually leads to kids adding wheat bran cereals and muesli bars to the cart by their own choice. Kids love freedom and guidelines that it must be 4+ stars give that freedom without overly sugary crap being allowed. It’s also great for adults wanting to spot clearly unhealthy food for their own goals. Setting a guideline of only 4.5+ foods in the cart is so simple. You can still find good snacks, it’s just that they’ll undoubtedly be very filling too.

OptionOfT2• 9 months ago

The EU has nutri-score which looks like this, but less information.

I quickly skimmed to the article you linked. I couldn't find anything as to whether it pertains to cooked or uncooked food?

For example, in the EU frozen pre-fried French fries have an A score (best), but that isn't correct, as no-one eats them like this. You fry them again in your home fryer.

Whereas smoked salmon is D or E because of the higher fat content, and the salt used for drying.

AnotherGoodName2• 9 months ago

It's meant to be 'as prepared' but as the above notes there's trickiness in certain brands claiming "our guidelines say to prepare it with skim milk" while everyone adds ice cream.

Still while no system is perfect and there's a need to call out brands that claim it's prepared with skim milk when it's clearly not i still think it's pretty damn great.

dzhiurgis2• 9 months ago

Smoked salmon probably derated because of smoke. Smoked meats are considered cancerogen in EU, shouldn't be sold at all.

dzhiurgis2• 9 months ago

I'll try this parenting hack. Thanks. I always assumed stars system are just another fraud.

p00ter2• 9 months ago

Now can we get them for chemical / artificial sweeteners as well?

Tiny sugar spoons are popping up on NYC fast-food menus

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