CELPIP Listening Part 6 Practice Test: Calorie Counts on Menus

NARRATOR: Glance at the menu board in almost any fast-food chain in Ontario and you'll find, tucked beside each burger and milkshake, a modest figure: its calorie count. That province already requires large chains to display this information, and advocates are now urging governments elsewhere to follow suit and, crucially, to extend the rule to independent restaurants. The idea sounds harmless enough. Who could object to more information? As it turns out, quite a few people.

NARRATOR: Registered dietitian Lena Dufresne has campaigned for mandatory labelling for over a decade. She contends that diners routinely underestimate what they eat in restaurants, sometimes by half, and that one restaurant meal can now contain an entire day's worth of energy. Without a number in front of them, she argues, customers are essentially ordering blindfolded. Dufresne concedes that studies show labels change what people order only slightly. But she points to a quieter effect: once restaurants must publish the figures, many of them reformulate their recipes, trimming portions or swapping ingredients, rather than display an embarrassing number. In her view, the real winner isn't the customer who counts calories, but everyone else who eats the improved dish without ever reading the menu.

NARRATOR: Marco Bellini, who runs a family restaurant in Halifax with a menu that changes weekly, finds the proposal exasperating. Laboratory analysis of a single dish can cost several hundred dollars, he notes, and a chef who improvises with whatever the farmers' market offers would be paying for new tests constantly. Large chains, with standardized recipes and entire nutrition departments, absorb such costs easily; small kitchens cannot. He also points out that his regulars already ask his servers about ingredients, and they get honest answers. Bellini also worries about the message. Reducing a meal to one number, he suggests, teaches people that a deep-fried snack and a plate of grilled salmon are interchangeable if their totals match, which is the opposite of sound nutrition. And for diners recovering from eating disorders, he adds, a menu crowded with numbers can turn a celebration into an ordeal.

NARRATOR: Dufresne acknowledges the burden on small businesses and has proposed exemptions for restaurants whose menus change frequently. Bellini calls that a sensible start, but wonders whether an exemption written today will survive the next round of regulations. Perhaps the fairest conclusion is that a number can inform a choice, but it cannot make one.