Food sellers try to keep you in the dark on calorie counts
Watching your weight while grabbing a bite at your favorite chain restaurant, supermarket food bar or convenience store was supposed to get easier under a 2010 law requiring that certain businesses post calorie counts.
This isn’t rocket science. But after seven years, the final posting rules are still on hold, and this month the Trump administration delayed compliance again.
If the newest date — May 7, 2018 — holds, it will have taken nearly as long to post calorie counts as it did to put a man on the moon after President Kennedy announced that goal.
How could something so seemingly simple take so long?
Start with pushback from lobbyists for major grocers, convenience stores, pizza chains and movie theaters. Their opposition, combined with a little help from allies in Congress and three delays by the Food and Drug Administration, have dragged out the rule-writing process.
The menu law would seem to warrant broad, bipartisan support, something that nutritionconscious Democrats and personal-responsibility minded Republicans could love: a way to provide information that leaves choices to individuals. No Nanny State telling people what to eat or not eat. And no burdens on small business, as the law applies only to chains with 20 or more outlets.
The idea was so appealing that some huge chains — including McDonald’s, Panera Bread and Potbelly — embraced it without waiting for a compliance date. Several cities also require calorie counts on restaurant menus, and last week New York City became the first to expand the requirement to chain supermarkets and convenience stores.
Putting calorie counts on menus is no cure-all for the nation’s obesity epidemic; 36.5% of adults are obese, more than double the percentage in 1980. But it at least gives people the opportunity to make leaner choices, if they are interested in doing so.
Yet major opponents are still battling the rules, drowning the FDA in a deluge of questions and critiques. Lobbyists for the grocers and convenience stores filed a petition last month seeking a delay and reconsideration of whether “non-restaurant businesses should be covered by the rule at all.”
Of course they should. They sell enormous amounts of prepared foods, everything from salads and Chinese dishes to rotisserie chicken and pizzas. It’s not the venue that counts but the food offerings. And how hard can it be to post a small sign over each offering with a calorie count?
Pizza chains want to place information online, arguing that 90% of customers order online or by phone. That’s fine as long as the data are easily accessible and provide calorie counts where customers can see them before ordering. The pizza makers have balked at posting calories in stores, but those customers deserve information, too, and many methods exist to provide it, including iPads on counters.
What foes really want is a new measure, pushed by lawmakers in Congress, that would weaken requirements and cater to industry wishes. For example, it would exempt any business that receives “the majority of orders” by phone or online, from posting calories in stores. It would also start the rule-making process from scratch. Perhaps adding another seven years of delay?