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Mandatory calorie counting in restaurants will surgically extract a lot of the joy of eating out – but let’s face it, it’s a necessary evil

Will menu-gazing soon become a grim exercise in calorie-calculating? Pic: Getty

Whenever I’m asked to think about restaurants and their lack of calorie counts on their menus, it brings me back to my cross feelings about prawn crackers. I used to eat them all the time. Even though to me they taste of pretty much nothing, they were an airy filler to munch on absent-mindedly, over a glass of wine, delivered in a restaurant without you asking for them by a cheerful waiter, until ...