Seoul restaurants to give calorie counts for meals from July

Health-conscious diners in Seoul will soon be able to consider waistlines as well as taste after restaurants here start listing the number of calories beside menu items from July. According to the city government on Wednesday (Feb. 22), about 250 restaurants in Seoul's main centers will inform guests of the number of calories in their dishes in a trial run.

The restaurants will be required to list the total number of calories in each meal as well as the calories per ingredient. “People are becoming a lot more interested in developing a healthy diet for themselves than in the past, and by encouraging restaurants to reveal the health content of their foods, we can allow diners to have better control over what and how much they eat,” a city official said. “I'm sure the pilot program will generate a good response from diners as a growing number of people are suffering from obesity or diabetes,” he added. “Every restaurant has its own cooking style, use of ingredients and quantity.

The calories in a bowl of seolleongtang in one restaurant will be different from seolleongtang in another restaurant,” he added. The chosen places serve dishes from the seven food items designated by city authorities as the most frequently consumed by Seoul's restaurant-goers. The list includes seolleongtang (beef-bone soup), jajangmyeon (Chinese black-bean noodles), jjamppong (chili soup with stir-fried seafood and vegetables), kalguksu (hand-rolled noodles in beef or chicken broth), samgyetang (chicken soup with ginseng), bibimbap (rice with red chili paste, meat and vegetables) and naengmyeon (noodles in cold meat broth). After studying the response of restauranteurs and diners during the trial run that extends until the end of the year, city authorities plan to eventually encourage more restaurants to reveal nutrient content on their menus.

Among the considered incentives are providing the restaurants with up to 1 million won ($1,000) in subsidies when they add new washbasins. The restaurants will also be given a framed sign indicating their participation in the city's campaign to list calories and have names listed on the city government's Web site (www.seoul.go.kr). The city recently organized a nine-member panel of doctors and nutritionists, who will review the dishes of restaurants willing to participate in the campaign starting next month.