The Center for Science in the Public Interest is serving as cocounsel on a class-action lawsuit against the good folks at Denny’s. The grounds for action: salty food.
The salt/blood pressure link is pretty clear. And the Denny’s/salt link is pretty clear, too. Here’s the Huffington Post:
“Consider a double cheeseburger with French fries. Most people know that’s not a health food. At McDonald’s, that meal has about 1,500 mg of sodium—a day’s worth for most of us. Denny’s (bigger) double cheeseburger with fries has 4,130 mg of sodium. That’s 275 percent of the recommended daily limit.
“A full dinner at Denny’s can be even worse. Say you start with a bowl of clam chowder, and move on to a Spicy Buffalo Chicken Melt sandwich and seasoned fries. That meal has 6,700 mg of sodium (along with 1,700 calories).”
The question is, can it seriously be legally actionable to serve oversalted food? One time, probably not. But by the millions of servings? Every year? Gets more arguable.
Image source: Flickr member Ingorrr under Creative Commons
The Center for “Science” in the “Public Interest” is neither. But it’s nice that we’ll all be paying more for food due to another frivolous lawsuit.
who eats at Dennys? YUK!
I eat at Denny’s at 3 am in the morning after the bars.
CSPI: The think tank that brings you such revelations as:
Movie theatre popcorn soaked in butter is fattening.
Mexican food covered with cheese is fattening.
Coffee drinks loaded with flavored syrup and topped with a cup of whipped cream aren’t diet food either.
And now, food at Denny’s is high in sodium. One word: DUH. If it comes as a surprise that most food in ANY restaurant isn’t loaded with flavor-enhancing fat and salt, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m thinking CSPI stands for Culinary Supervision for the Protection of Idiots.
At least the people at Denny’s have the decency to provide nutrition information on their website. You want a healthier dining experience? Let’s see the big national full-service chains release nutritional information. Claim Jumper and Cheesecake Factory, I’m lookin’ at you.
I actually don’t think the salt/blood pressure link is all that clear. If it was, there wouldn’t be so much debate.
Gotta love CSPI. That’s one organization with a lot of time on their hands.
Cheesecake Factory’s nutritional data:
http://calorielab.com/news/2007/07/28/calorie-pusher-comes-to-town-the-cheesecake-factory-hits-rochester/
Claim Jumper:
http://www.thedailyplate.com/nutrition-calories/food/claim-jumper
But hey, even the raw foodist banana cream pie isn’t diet food at over 550 calories/slice:
http://www.chow.com/recipes/13722
Then again, there’s talk about putting labels on hot dogs to let us know that they aren’t health food items. Shocking.