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It's health care benefits sign-up time around here at the RT, where we're still lucky enough to have them, and the talk this year is of edging toward plans that are less costly for people who do what they can to stay healthy. The emphasis is on preventive care: wellness checkups, smoking cessation -- maybe someday a person's BMI, or body mass index, a measure of body fat based on height and weight. Uh-oh.

That, I suppose, is why I had a more than passing interest in a story that ran last week in USA Today: A then-and-now survey of New York City diners showed that the city's pioneering menu-labeling law (which since March 2008 has required chain restaurants to display the number of calories in their menu offerings) has helped the willing cut down. I say the willing because a little more than half the people surveyed said they saw the calorie postings, but only 15 percent said they actually used the information.

Still, those who did bought food that averaged 754 calories for lunch in 2009, compared to 860 calories for those who didn't see the information or ignored it. "The overall calories purchased decreased at nine chains between 2007 and 2009," the newspaper reported, "including dropping significantly at McDonald's, Au Bon Pain, KFC and Starbucks."

The findings are more hopeful than an earlier and much smaller study that suggested that people who noticed the calories and took them into account said they made healthier choices, but actually made worse ones.

Yeow. If only just wanting to could change us.