The latest promotion from Domino’s Pizza rewards gluttons who order a pasta-filled bread bowl with a free chocolate lava cake!  Wow–for just $5.99!  (Excuse me while I retch.)

Turns out that this lovely little combination provides at least 1600 calories and 47 grams of fat:  1300 calories/30 g fat (or more, depending on pasta choices) for the bread/pasta and 357  calories/17 g fat for the chocolate lava cake.  Don’t look for the bread bowls’ nutritional information on Domino’s website:  it’s conveniently missing!

Sometimes I think the most important healthcare reform we could undertake as a nation is to REQUIRE all chain restaurants to print nutritional information on packaging, or to prominently post it in stores.  Hey, if it works for packaged food, why can’t “nutrition facts” be printed on fast food wrappers?  Most of America is completely ignorant about the calorie content of prepared foods.  As obesity-related illnesses skyrocket in our country, it seems like a simple step toward dietary sanity.

New York City’s initial attempt to compel chains to display nutritional information was struck down by lower courts, appealed, and ultimately upheld by the federal appeals court in March 2009.  Seattle, Philadelphia, and the state of California have similar requirements.  The Center for Science in the Public Interest supports menu labeling, too.  Here in the fattest part of a fatty country, shouldn’t we care more than a little about this issue?