Can calories on menus halt the obesity crisis?

According to experts from Oxford and Columbia Universities,  unless the great British lifestyle changes – for the better – almost half of men and four in 10 women could  be classed as obese by the year 2030.

Predictions like these are notoriously difficult to make with any degree of accuracy, of course. But the statistics are surely a timely wake-up call for health experts, as well as the general public.

Results of a survey carried out for All About Health suggest the majority of people are currently either of average weight or overweight (just over 50 percent of men and women who were asked said they thought they were of average weight, while just over 35 percent claimed to be overweight – only six percent of women and 4.5 percent of men said they were very overweight).

But of those who considered themselves overweight or very overweight, the clear majority admitted they were 22lb or more heavier than they should be – that's just over four out of 10 women and almost three out of 10 men.

So the recent news that fast food chain McDonald's has joined the growing ranks of restaurants that publishes calorie information on its menus can only be good news. Can't it?

Other food outlets that include calories on menus – as part of the government's The Responsibility Deal – include KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Burger King, Harvester, Pret a Manger and JD Wetherspoon.  Whether or not you take notice of the calorie counts on menus, however, boils down to a number of things, including whether or not you already have a weight problem.

Many critics of the calories-on-menus scheme say most people will ignore such information anyway. UK watchdog Which?, however, has polled members of the public, and according to its findings two thirds say it's important to see calorie information in restaurants.

And this, perhaps, is why. It is notoriously difficult to gauge how many calories are in most types of dishes – unless you're a nutritionist or a dietician, that is. The Which? report cited a few examples of how calories in food can be highly deceptive, including:

• A slice of carrot cake from Costa has more calories than a chocolate custard Krispy Kreme doughnut.
• A Pizza Hut Regular Pan Margherita pizza contains 1128 calories – but a Pizza Express Classic Margherita clocks up slightly more than half that amount (674).
•  Even a 'skinny' lemon and poppy seed iced muffin from Starbucks contains more calories than a Starbucks standard apple and cinnamon muffin.

All of which goes to show, it's not easy to decide what to choose off the menu if you're watching what you eat.

And surely it's better to know, even if you're going to ignore the calorie warnings, than to be in the dark about what you're eating?

What do you think? Will you be changing what you eat at McDonald's now that the calories contained in its meals are on display?