From Nando’s to Domino’s and Harvester

Do you carefully count calories when eating out?

Starting tomorrow, grocery chains with at least 250 employees will have to indicate on their menus how many calories are in each product.

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The new rule comes as the government aims to tackle obesity and encourage healthier eating.

Obesity-Related Diseases costs the NHS more than £6billion each year, while one in three children leave primary school with excess flab.

But is adding calorie information to menus a helpful move that gives customers the information they need to make healthy choices, or is it a case of “nanny status” spoiling a meal’s enjoyment?

As the cost-of-living crisis begins to take hold, many people are likely to eat out less anyway.

Here, two Sun writers present their opposing views.

And we show you how many calories are in some of the nation’s most popular foods.

Yes, says Emily Fairbairn

ON a recent visit to my beloved Franco Manca, I didn’t expect to be served a large slice of reality alongside my freshly baked pizza.

But that’s what I got with the redesigned menu. Not a single pizza on it was under 780 calories, unless you count the no-cheese ones (which I don’t count).

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Obviously I wasn’t deterred. (No one really believes that pizza is a healthy food.) But seeing the calorie count in black and white certainly left an unpleasant connotation.

Eating out should be a pleasure, not a reason to feel bad.

I’m not a calorie counter. But still, some of the joy was replaced by guilt.

And it worried me for those for whom eating is rarely a carefree experience. There are 1.25 million men and women with eating disorders.

Many of those in recovery say restaurants have been a rare place to escape calorie obsession. No more.

According to the eating disorder charity Beat, 93 percent of current or former sufferers said calories in their diets negatively impacted them.

And there’s little evidence that the step reduces obesity in general.

People who really should be monitoring their calorie intake will ignore the new numbers, but those who would like to ignore them won’t be able to.

Wouldn’t it be nice to take this ghastly mystery off the table for good?

No, says Oliver Harvey

AFTER a decent cooked breakfast, I had trekked to my South London eatery to be confronted with the newfangled horror of calorie menus.

“Elf’n’safety” and its tragic twin “wellbeing” had struck again. I thought, “No thanks. It’s none of your business what I eat.”

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I then scrolled down the menu to see the ballooning calorie content of the Sunday roasts on offer.

roast pork belly? More than 2,600 calories. Roast beef? Almost 2,000 calories.

Even the vegan Wellington had nearly 1,800 calories. The NHS estimates that a man should be consuming around 2,500 calories a day.

What with the brekkie, the cider I drank, and the red wine I had my eye on — plus the evening toast I’d need to soak it all up — I’d happily stay under double the amount if I had a roast would have.

Further down the menu was the baked potato gnocchi, which I wouldn’t have looked at twice last week. Even with a side of broccoli, which packs in a whopping 1,000 fewer calories than even the vegan roast.

So off I went. On their bed of spring greens and toasted sesame seeds, the gnocchi paired very well with a glass of Montepulciano.

It even left enough in my calorie store to raise a second glass to those wise folks from the land of well-being.

I thought the calorie count would ruin my night. But it made it better.

The Fattiest Meals and Britain’s Largest Grocery Chains

Nandos

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five types

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Harvester

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dominoes

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Wagamama

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