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Good news for haters of the nanny state: New York City’s new law requiring calorie counts on chain restaurant menu boards doesn’t appear to be making any difference.  In fact, it might be causing people to eat more.

The full study is here.  Results are below.  The researchers chose 14 fast-food outlets in low-income NYC neighborhoods (Newark was a control group) and interviewed a few hundred people both before and after the calorie labeling law went into effect, asking them if they’d noticed the calorie counts and if they’d changed their selection because of it.  Then they got receipts from each respondent so they could find out what they’d actually purchased.

The results were pretty dismal: only about half the respondents even noticed the calorie counts and only 15% said they influenced their choice.  But the receipts told an even more dismal story: overall, people actually purchased more calories after the law went into effect.  The results aren’t statistically significant, though, so basically all the researchers can really say is that the law (so far) hasn’t had any effect.  The only glimmer of good news is that among people under 35, respondents who noticed the labeling did seem to cut back a bit.  No other subgroup showed any effect.  So who knows?  Young people probably respond to this kind of thing more quickly than older people, so maybe it’s just going to take some more time before all this stuff sinks in.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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