Restaurants should provide nutrition information with their menus, reduce marketing of high-calorie food and offer healthier choices to help cut obesity rates, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Friday.
The idea left a bad taste for the restaurant industry.
"How can anyone realistically manage that?" asked Ivan Matsunaga, executive vice president of Carol Stream-based Connie's Pizza and chairman of the Illinois Restaurant Association.
As the amount of food eaten outside the home increases, the agency said restaurants need to take the lead in cutting fat from the diet of Americans.
The FDA does not have the legal authority to mandate that restaurants take such actions, so the announcement only provides a set of guidelines, the agency said. The recommendation that all chain restaurants provide calorie information faced opposition from the National Restaurant Association before it was made.
''As an industry we really can't get behind mandated nutrition information on menus,'' said Sheila Cohn, director of nutrition policy for the National Restaurant Association. Some restaurants update their menus daily and the amount of ingredients can vary depending on who cooks it, she said.
Legislation to require menu labeling was defeated in Congress last year. Similar bills are under consideration by New York state and Washington, D.C.
"Does the dining public really want that, would be my question," said Tod Barber, director of operations for Palatine-based Weber Grill Restaurants, which just introduced a gluten-free menu and has an ingredient list for each of its dishes to better serve diners with food allergies.
The center's report said that at least 60 percent of respondents in four national polls wanted calories to be listed on menus. But the center found that only half of 300 large restaurant chains surveyed provide any nutrition information.
Cost is a major factor, which even the report noted. Laboratory work needed to calculate calorie content of one item can cost $100; an entire menu can cost $11,500 to $46,000, the report said.
The FDA hired the nonprofit Keystone Center for $500,000 in June 2004 to determine ways to help slow the nation's rising obesity rates.
Some major restaurants are voluntarily starting to provide more information about calorie content, said Jeff Cronin, a spokesman for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Ruby Tuesday Inc., for instance, has put nutrition information for almost all its items on restaurant menus, he said. Now the restaurant puts the information on a brochure that goes along with the menu. Subway sandwich shops also put nutrition information for some items on napkins, Cronin said, and Oak Brook-based McDonald's Corp. has begun to include some caloric information in its packaging.
Steve - let's just say what is not being said here...the national restaurant association does not want to put the nutrition information on its menus because the public will be appalled at what they discover. Restaurants can get away with putting more fat, more sodium, etc. on their menus because they do not have to list the ingredients or nutrition information. That should change, so at least the customer can choose.
Some of these restaurants claim that they are offering healthier fare, and some are. Yet, some of these "healthier items" are loaded with chemicals. Our Healthy Eating While Dining Out Action Plan covers many of the most well-known restaurants and explains what is best on menu if you are trying to maintain balanced eating and sustained weight-loss.
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