Regulations without benefits

Often laws and regulations are promulgated simply to show the public the politicians and bureaucrats are 'doing something' about a 'problem'.  Yet they often have no or even pernicious results and always have costs:  in money, in wasted time, in liberty.  And every one is an opportunity for rent seekers to manipulate the rules to enrich themselves.  "Menu Calorie Counts" is a good example:

As Michelle Malkin wrote this week, calorie counts on menus simply do not work: A new study by the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School found that calorie counts on menus do nothing to sway people’s food choices.

This is just the latest study to come to this conclusion — it joins a number of others showing the same results. Another recent study, conducted in Great Britain where menu labeling is mandatory (as it will be in the United States thanks to Obamacare’s passage), found customers’ menu choices stayed the same despite the information provided to them. A study conducted at NYU’s School of Medicine and published in the February 15, 2011, edition of the International Journal of Obesityfound that menu labels have little effect on the food choices made by either teens or their parents.

In 2009, a joint NYU/Yale study published in the journal Health Affairs examined 1,100 customers at four fast-food restaurants in poor neighborhoods in New York City (where obesity rates are high) and found that only half the customers noticed the prominently posted calorie counts. Of those, only 28 percent said the information had influenced their ordering; nine out of ten of those said they had made healthier choices as a result. But upon inspection of their receipts, researchers found that these same customers who said they made healthier choices actually ordered items that were higher in calories.