C-units: a proposal to reduce healthcare costs

Here's an idea I submitted to www.healthreform.gov a few minutes ago...

Reduce healthcare costs significantly by attacking a major cause of illness: over-eating! Make it patriotic to lose weight and get fit. Make it UN-patriotic for businesses to push big portions and unhealthy foods.

Here's an idea: create a new unit equal to 100 calories. Call it a 'C-number', or something. Require restaurant menus and fast-food receipts to show the 'C-number' for each individual item. An order of french-fries might be 2.5 C-units. Pasta with cream sauce might be 11 C-units. Then have a big campaign to constantly ask people "what was your C-count today?" and push the fact that generally C-counts shouldn't be more than 20 per day. This would raise awareness that too many of us eat far too many calories, and (hopefully) raise the demand for more reasonable portions and healthier foods.

Of course, you don't need 'C-units' to count calories; but the advantage to 'C-units' have is that they would allow people to deal with smaller numbers. It's much easier to count to 20 than to 2000.