The Food Police

Now they're taking aim at restaurant meals:

Many U.S. chain restaurants are promoting "extreme eating" with dishes that pack at least a day's worth of calories and fat, without giving customers facts about their orders, a consumer group said on Monday.

Displaying restaurant offerings including a cheese-laden chicken-and-pasta dish they dubbed "Angioplasta," officials at the Center for Science in the Public Interest said such dishes help fuel national epidemics of obesity and heart disease.

They urged local, state and national governments to make restaurants list nutritional data on their menus.

Michael Jacobson, the group's executive director, took aim at "table-service" chain restaurants like Ruby Tuesday's and Uno Chicago Grill. Such places increasingly stuff their dishes with extra unhealthy ingredients, he said.

"What we're finding is that table-service restaurants have launched into a whole new era of extreme eating," Jacobson said. "If we're going to deal with the epidemic of obesity and the tremendous prevalence of heart attacks and strokes, we're going to have to do something about restaurant foods."

Look, it's terribly simple. People own their own bodies and if they want to die well fed and fat, then so be it. What they stuff into their mouths is no business of anyone else's.

But then, it's tough to raise money for the CSPI with that sort of attitude.