Too Much Information?

Get ready for a fight over calorie counts on menus.

by Tom Namako

fat

Last July, 2,400 chain restaurants in New York City were told to adhere to a new rule: List the number of calories next to your menu items, or face penalties. It was part of the city health commissioner's plan to combat obesity (and rising health-care costs) with educated guilt. Do you really need a large, 570-calorie order of fries from McDonald's? Or, the signs would ask, will a small, 250-calorie size do?

Eight months later, most restaurant owners still aren't posting their calorie counts. Immediately after the July rule was approved, the New York State Restaurant Association filed a federal lawsuit against it and won. The city rewrote the rules, the association sued again, and those hearings are ongoing. In the meantime, several other state governments have shot down similar measures. A bill in Washington state threatens to put a moratorium on Seattle's new menu-labeling law, so that the issue can be studied. Menu labeling, it seems, is politically and legally risky.

Which, of course, makes it perfect for Philly. Last month, Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown introduced a bill — now in committee — that would require any business with more than 10 restaurants nationwide to list calories on its menus or selection boards. She proposed a similar bill last year that would have required chains to list not just calories but sodium, fat and other information. It died when the National Restaurant Association vowed to fight it; this bill is the watered-down whiskey to its predecessor.

It's still too strong for the Pennsylvania Restaurant Association, which says it's difficult to determine the calories in people's tailor-made food choices. Jim Creed, president of the PRA's Philadelphia and Delaware Valley chapters, says his group will "take a stand," and that a lawsuit is "a possibility." Reynolds Brown says this is no reason to back down. "It may indeed become susceptible to lawsuits, but that's not enough for me to say no," she says. So away we go.

Nutrition experts say one reason menu labeling has become the nation's latest food fight is because it's a straightforward plan of attack against obesity.

That doesn't mean it's the best plan. Michael Lowe, a Drexel University professor and director of Lowe Labs, which studies eating behavior, says that removing soda and candy from schools would be more effective, as would taxing unhealthy foods to subsidize healthy ones. The former idea would take a revenue stream from education; the latter would involve national policy changes.

"I would put [menu labeling] toward the weaker end of the spectrum," says Lowe. He still supports Reynolds Brown's idea: "Is it meaningful and worthwhile? Yes."

This notion of menu labeling as inoffensive and mildly effective is shared by Stella Volpe, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. If labels were instituted, people would still go to McDonald's, Volpe says. But they might pass on the Big Mac (540 calories) in favor of a cheeseburger (300).

"The important thing is that the choice is healthier, and this idea will help people make that decision," she says. "It might not fight obesity completely, but it will help with chronic ailments like heart disease."

At least one local restaurateur is ready to cooperate: Dave Magrogan, who, as owner of Kildare's and several other establishments in the region, would have to adhere to the labels, says he'll be the first to order new menus if Philly's bill is passed. "People today, they eat out more than ever," Magrogan says. "They've got to know what they're ordering," (Cosi and the Starr Restaurant Group, which would also be affected by the bill, did not return calls for comment.)

The question, though, is whether the small gains menu labeling would bring are worth the legal trouble. It's almost inevitable that if City Council serves up Brown's bill, the restaurant industry will try to send it back. Reynolds Brown still sees it as a worthwhile first step. "What we're doing right now, this isn't the end-all and be-all," she says. "At the end of the day, all we're asking for is a little bit more information."

(tom.namako@citypaper.net)