TORONTO - Chain restaurant customers deserve to know how much junk they're packing into their trunks, NDP MPP France Gelinas says.

Her private member's bill - Healthy Decisions for Healthy Eating - would require restaurants to post calorie counts on menus.

The bill, which would apply to chain restaurants with five or more outlets in Ontario and yearly earnings of at least $5 million, would also require that particularly high calorie or salty food be highlighted on the menu.

"Did you know calorie-wise you could have three burgers for what you will get in one medium chocolate shake?" Gelinas said Tuesday.

A bran muffin might contain almost twice as many calories as a Boston cream donut, she said.

It's also impossible to tell from looking at a burger how much salt it contains, and some have more than a healthy daily limit of sodium, she said.

The bill would also make it mandatory for every restaurant to have more information on the nutritional value of its food.

"We went to 30 different restaurants that would qualify for the bill...Out of the 30, only nine of them had that information available with a brochure," she said.

A previous version of her bill passed second reading but never made it into law.