[sounddust]

Even if it only makes moderately health-conscious people more healthy, it will still be a net benefit to the overall health and productivity of Americans. And if it reduces healthcare costs of the average American by even a minuscule amount, it will easily compensate for the effort required to put up the calorie coutns (which is honestly not very hard nor expensive)

[lethargus]

The moderately health-conscious person is not the average American. The average American is ignorant and overweight and has led a life of poor eating choices. Not because of lack of information, but because of lack of caring and lack of habit. No nutritional label is going to change that.

Unfortunately the government is in the business of creating illusions. As long as we slap a label on something we create the illusion that we are making progress.

This is along the same lines that the government thinks they are making school lunches healthier by adding a fruit cup with their food but pay no attention to that fruit cup being loaded with sugar because of the heavy syrup in the container.

It just creates the illusion that we are doing something healthy, but not actually fixing the problem.

I do not believe that there is much we can do about the majority of adult Americans, but we could start shaping the future for the children and foster proper eating habits from the beginning.

[sounddust]

When I said the "average" American, I meant the mathematical mean. That is to say, if the health-conscious people get slightly healthier and the rest stay the same, that pulls the average up slightly, which means less medical bills on average (again, mathematical mean) and greater average productivity.

I don't disagree with most of your points, but at the same time I don't see why there's any reason this law should not exist; it's easy to implement and does help some people. This law is not the health care solution; it's one tiny part of it.

I think that the article is arguing that since this law will not have a major impact on Americans' health, it should not be implemented. I'm arguing that it's a good law because it makes sense to provide basic information on food, and it's not an unreasonable hassle to do so.

[lethargus]

The burden placed on the healthcare system are not by health conscious people but rather the people making poor lifestyle/food choices.

First, do you think that a health conscious person really needs that label to make a choice? Chances are they are conscious enough to make the proper choice to begin with. They are also probably making choices between items that are healthier than what an average person eats from a typical fast food joint.

Second, if they are already health conscious, I would go so far as to say they, on average, use the healthcare system the least in terms of ailments caused by poor food choices. So if you take a slightly healthy person and possibly make them marginally healthier, are they really using the healthcare system less, as a whole, to make a difference?