 Last year the City of Portland began a program in cooperation with local restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus. Recently the city surveyed diners at participating restaurants to find out whether or not the information was useful to them. Leslie McVane talked with public health evaluator Toho Soma about the results of the study. Well Toho, the holidays are here and one of the first things people think about during the holidays is food. Lots of food and oh my goodness I've got to work out after or before but not during. So healthy Portland, healthy Maine partnership. Did a project, a survey and tell us a little bit about what you did and what you found. Sure, so about two and a half years ago, the Healthy Portland, Healthy Maine partnership, which is part of the city's public health division, was fortunate enough to receive some federal stimulus funding to pursue a project called community spreading prevention to work. And it was an overall obesity prevention effort. And as part of that effort we developed a program called Smart Meals for Me and what that entailed was we hired a registered dietitian and we sought out local restaurants that wanted to have their menus analyzed for calorie content and other nutritional information and then give them a small stipend so that they could redo their menus and signage to list the calorie contents of their menu items. And so that was implemented like I said about two years ago and over the summer in August and September we did a survey of seven of those restaurants to see how patrons liked it, whether it affected what they had chosen and just kind of overall impressions about menu labeling in general. And the result was that people really do want to know how many calories in the food they're buying. Our survey results showed that about three and four customers that we surveyed and we surveyed about 370 customers said that they overall want to see calorie contents listed on all restaurant menu items, not just the ones at the restaurants they went to. They just think overall it's a great idea. But everywhere. And it kind of supports previous research. They've done national research where they ask people to estimate the calorie counts of certain restaurant items and about 90% of them underestimate the number of calories that are in these restaurant items by about 600 calories. So that's a lot of extra calories that you're forgetting about. And of course that'll add up every time you go out and especially with Portland being such a great foodie city with a lot of independent restaurants and, you know, there's a lot of options. Well, we are like the number one small food city in the country. Exactly. But we're also listed as among the highest of obesity in citizens. Right. And so those two things together make us realize we are missing a lot of those calories in there. Exactly. And how can we get on top of this? And this is one way. This is one way. And, you know, another great aspect of Portland's food scene is that we have a lot of independently owned restaurants, not a whole lot of chains. And as part of the Federal Affordable Care Act, there's a mandate coming up in the next few years where all chain restaurants have to list the calorie contents of their menu items. So that is already kind of, the balls are rolling with that. Right. But there hasn't really been done, there hasn't really any momentum around independently owned restaurants. So this is one way we want to offer that service to them. I think it's wonderful. There was just a listing in the paper recently showing calories at a couple of different places. And there were some things that I would order and I'm like, there are that many calories? I had no idea. Exactly. I mean, it was just egg and bread. Right. I mean, you know, how many calories could there be in that? Right. Certainly, if I had seen that in a restaurant, I would think, well, maybe that's not what I want right now. Right. You know, I'm watching calories, I'm watching my weight. Maybe I'll try something else. Exactly. Let's see what has a little lower calorie content, but is still nutritious and good and will fill me up. Exactly. And so, you know, we in fact saw some of those results specifically by January from that one in two women who had seen the calorie contents listed decided to change what they'd ordered and whether that means they'd ordered something with fewer calories or maybe they chose not to have an appetizer dessert. Exactly. But it gives them that option and the knowledge to make the choice. Exactly. If people want to know more about this, if restaurants want to find out how they can become involved, how can they get in touch with people? First is to go to our website, which is publichealth.portlandmain.gov and they can get to our homepage and then find out more information about not only smart meals but about all of our public health programs. And there are a lot of them. Thank you, Toho, for being here again. Thanks for having me.