Restaurants in New York City are as diverse and plentiful as the people who live and visit the city. The choices are in the thousands, and it is up to the customer to decide which to choose.
To make an informed decision, promote healthy eating, and make sure that what you are taking in will not reflect badly on
New York City restaurants, the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene undertakes various programs to promote these objectives.
Here are some of the ways they do it.
Let the letters do the talking.
The Health Department has implemented a system which grades restaurants in New York City according to the results of their sanitary inspections.
The grades are designated as A, B, and C, with A having the least violation, and C with the most. With this system, the Health Department aims to provide information to the eating public so they can choose well, and at the same time challenge the restaurants to aim or maintain the highest grade label.
These grade labels are required to be posted at the door or wall of restaurants in New York City, and must be seen by the passing public.
Calorie labeling.
Alarmed at the rising obesity epidemic in the United States, the Department of Health raised a further alarm specific to New York City stating that obesity is also an epidemic in the Big Apple, according to its studies.
Health Department studies also show that eating out contributes to obesity, especially those eating out in establishments with super-sized meals.
Thus, the Health Department is pushing for restaurants in New York City to indicate calorie levels in food establishments as it has determined that people use nutritious labels, if they are available; their food choices are influenced by what are indicated in the nutritious labels; and they buy food with fewer calories if nutritious labels are available.
Cut the salt.
On November 8, 2010, the Health Department announced that it is embarking on a new campaign to encourage people to be more conscious about their salt in-take.
Alarmed at the information that salt contributes to the 23,000 preventable deaths per year in New York City by helping cause strokes, heart attacks, and high blood pressure diseases, the Health Department is urging people to closely examine the nutritional information of every kind of food they take, and choose those with lesser sodium content.
The Health Department advises that the maximum salt intake for each person must not be more than 1,500 mg of sodium each day.
The Health Department also says that 80% of the salt in our food is already in them when we buy or order them, and we only add 11 percent when we start eating them, thus the effort to choose starts when the food is bought or ordered.
With its campaign on calorie labeling addressed to New York City restaurants, the Health Department hopes that providing more information will help people choose wisely.
The cut-your-salt campaign will run for two months from November 2010, and will be implemented through posters in subways, and health bulletins in various languages.
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