#008 : Straigh fats, err, facts please

Sydney Morning Herald, Stay in Touch, 27/10/06 p.22

We know the Health Minister, Tony Abbott, is a bean counter, but is he a calorie
counter as well? At yesterday ’s press conference on the Federal Government ’s
"traffic-light initiative" for food labelling he said: "We need to know how many
calories there are in the foodstuffs we eat. We need to know, for instance, that
there ’s 270 calories in a Mars Bar, 208 calories in a Magnum ice-cream, 161
calories in a small Coke and there ’s 1081 calories in a large Big Mac meal." It
isn ’t the first time Abbott has quoted these fast food statistics. In May he
used them in a Herald article and in an address to the Queensland Obesity
Summit. Last month he used them at another obesity conference.
We would like to point out to the minister that calories in food depend on the varieties.
While Abbott presumably refers to a Classic Magnum in his oft-quoted figures if he was to order from the Magnum Seven Deadly Sins range, he would have to choose
between calorie levels of 345 for a "Vanity" and a whopping 425 for a "Gluttony"
Magnum.
We think the health-conscious minister would be predisposed towards the former.