Seek calorie list on fast food menu boards

Health advocates and representatives of restaurants butted heads at a public hearing held by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) last week on the city’s plan to require chain restaurants such as McDonald’s to put calorie content information on their menu boards.
With a growing concern for the nation’s obesity problem, supporters of the plan contend it would help prevent people from becoming obese. The theory behind the proposal is that people would make healthier choices if they knew the caloric content in the foods they eat before they ordered them.
“Calorie information listed boldly and ubiquitously on menus and menu boards, right alongside the price, gives us the basic information we need to make informed choices about food,” said Meme Roth, president of National Action Against Obesity at the hearing on Tuesday, November 27.
“Restaurants should stop looking to conceal information and instead, light up their marketing departments to explore how posting calorie information in menus and on menu boards can help better market their food.”
But the restaurant groups argue the proposal is an inconvenience to small franchise restaurants. According to them, it would be very costly to upgrade the menu boards and useless especially since the DOHMH does not have sufficient evidence that proves the effectiveness of displaying the calorie content of food items.
“The [health] department has no evidence that this restrictive approach is better or more effective,” said Sheila Weiss, director of nutrition policy health and safety regulatory affairs for the National Restaurant Association. “Many restaurants are already providing nutritional information to their customers … If the true goal is to provide customers with more information, then efforts to restrict that information to menus/menu boards are misguided.”
The proposed regulation is the second attempt by the city to implement such a rule. Last December, restaurants were subject to similar parameters until restaurant groups took the issue to court. A federal judge struck down the law in September.
The DOHMH restructured the guidelines last month and are expected to vote on it in January. City officials believe this plan will help reduce obesity and diabetes once the nutritional and calorie information is more accessible, but one Queens resident believes the city should do more.
“For the people who are already calorie counters, it would be a big help in staying healthy,” said Stephen Tang, a Fresh Meadows resident. “A city plan like this should go hand in hand with educating the consumers more about the importance of regulating daily calorie intake and exercising, but as a single plan, they are not very effective.”
No matter what the arguments are for either side, the plan, if adopted, would go into affect on March 31, 2008 affecting all city restaurants that have at least 15 outlets nationwide or about 10 percent of all New York City restaurants.