May 13, 2008

Getting your fingers on fast-food nutritional details

Web service will send information to users for free

By Liz Harrelson / Daily News Correspondent

Calorie-counting fast-food lovers may be heartened to know there's a new source for nutrition information at their fingertips.

"Wellternatives," a service that zips calorie and nutritional information of fast-food restaurant dishes and recommendations for healthier alternatives to a user's e-mail or cell phone - free of charge - was launched by the San Mateo-based company Wellsphere.com last week.

"It's amazing. We're getting a lot of foot traffic," said Wellsphere CEO Ron Gutman in a recent telephone interview.

"We're providing a huge service to people by literally putting (nutrition information) in their hands and making it convenient and making it free," Gutman said. "Restaurants tend to hide this information very deeply."

California Senate Bill 120, which would have required California restaurants to display nutrition information near or beside their menu items, was vetoed in August by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Similar bills - SB 1420 and AB 2572 - have since been introduced. Similar struggles between restaurant associations and legislators are also occurring in New York.

"We think it's pretty ridiculous for consumers to have to suffer while lobbyists and lawmakers battle it out in court. A recent survey done by Aramark shows that 83 percent of diners want restaurants to make nutritional information available to them - so we decided to give people the information they need to make better menu choices - anytime, anywhere," Gutman said. "People have been really wanting to get this information in restaurants for a long time."

A team of physicians, computer scientists, nutrition experts and restaurant industry veterans developed the program - which considers nutritional factors, taste preferences, portion size and types of food - for the service. Included in this database is nutrition information for "tens of thousands" of menu items from an estimated 400 chain and fast-food restaurants, Gutman said.

"A lot of people are overweight and not eating right, and fast-food restaurants aren't helping," said Fred Johnson, a Redwood City resident standing outside a McDonald's restaurant in Redwood City. "People should be free to choose, but a lot of people don't care about their body."

Johnson said he doesn't eat fast food, candy or sugar, but visited the Redwood City restaurant to utilize another service.

"I just came to use the bathroom," Johnson said.

McDonald's managers at restaurants in San Mateo and Redwood City declined to comment for this article.

Since its launch Wednesday, Wellsphere workers - including Gutman - have been working around the clock.

"We felt that there was a user's need for something like that, and we wanted to show that we care and that all the world will check out our site," Gutman said.

Wellternatives can be visited at www.wellsphere.com/wellternatives.s or by sending a text message to 878787 with the word "diet" followed by a name of a chain restaurant and a menu item.