Are you really what you eat? Katie Macpherson looks into our culture of quantity over quality.

Picking healthy options in cafes always seems so straightforward. You pick the sandwich or the panini with the most vegetables in it and surely that means it is a healthy option, right?

While out to lunch with a friend at Starbucks recently I opted for a mozzarella and tomato panini. I thought I was being relatively healthy, but when I got home and looked it up online the total calorie content for that one item of food was 903, almost half of the daily recommended intake for adult women. On top of that I had grabbed a vanilla frappuccino as a treat which in itself added a further 330 calories onto my total – you do the maths. Now, I’ve never been one for calorie counting but it is worrying to think that food we assume is healthy may have a hidden risk. The law makes the access to calories in food a legal requirement for most establishments that provide food and drinks. The website for Starbucks has some of the calorie information but on other items it sells it attaches an ‘ask in store for nutritional details’. At the beginning of the year, however, some Starbucks began to openly display their calorie numbers next to their food and coffee. The bleed over from American law, wherein the calories must be openly displayed next to the item, has only been instilled in a few of the stores around Edinburgh. The eventual transition could be seen as complete digression and honesty when it comes to food.

So does this runaround for information mean that cafes and restaurants are purposefully making it hard to access information on the fear that sales will fall? Or is it genuinely just bad website design? The blame for the unhealthy choice in panini surely falls on my shoulders and not the establishments, because I didn’t take the time to check the packaging. Yes I do feel that restaurants have an obligation to their customers to be upfront about the health of their meals but it is ultimately us who hold the final choice.

The fact is calorie counting, while it is a very useful tool when we are looking to watch our weight, can also become dangerous. With new smart phone applications doing the maths and working out daily intakes it’s very easy to cross the line between caution and abuse. Many eating disorders are now associated with the use of calorie counting. Harvard University even went so far as to remove the nutritional information on their student dining package because of the associations it has with making eating disorders worse. The removal of this access to information in some cases may be a good thing.

However, as some food is deceptive in its appearance of health, there must be a happy medium. While I don’t expect food companies to start putting large labels on the front of products saying ‘CALORIFIC!’, I am now going to take the time to look at and scrutinise foods I assume are healthy.

Another problem with calorie counting is the assumption that if something is low in calories it must be a better option for your body. Or worse, the understanding that a product with a low calorie count is bad for you and the subsequent consumption of it anyway. In this regard my vice is Diet Coke. I already know that while the average can only contain 1.3 calories it is horrific for dental health due to the high levels of acid and some of its ingredients are associated with specific types of cancer. Am I willing to give it up for the sake of health? No, because I love the taste and for me drinking it is not about weight loss. When it comes down to it we have the ultimate power, the power to abuse ourselves, either by eating badly or restrictively but also the power to make ourselves better.