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New law gives diners something to chew on
When Rossanna Punzalan dines out, she wants to eat what she likes to eat, without any nagging accompanying her meal.
For this Delaware diner and millions of other Americans, that blissful ignorance about nutrition will no longer be a menu option.
As part of President Obama's health care reform, U.S. restaurants with 20 or more locations have been ordered to start listing total calorie counts prominently alongside each dish they sell, in the hope that a little knowledge will go a long way toward encouraging healthier choices.
The move is a victory for health advocates, and, oddly enough, for the restaurant industry, which is glad it no longer has to contend with a state-by-state, piecemeal approach. The industry's also relieved -- for now, at least -- that the law excludes smaller independent restaurants, where compliance would be a practical impossibility.
Yet there are still no assurances that labeling will have the impact many hope for, and in some circles there's a concern that government's paternalistic role in lifestyle choices is far from done. Just this month, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the food industry may face government-imposed sodium limits if it doesn't voluntarily reduce salt content.
"I don't worry about it," Panera Bread customer Tiffany McCleave, of Newark, said of calorie counts last week. "I eat what I like."
There's no doubt that the calorie counts, once they're posted and digested by diners at the mega-portion chain restaurants, will raise a few eyebrows and dull a few appetites.
Behind those healthy sounding names and "lite" menu choices lie some true caloric heft -- who knew that Ruby Tuesdays' steak-and-lobster dinner, for example, has about two-thirds fewer calories than its Avocado Turkey Burger. And for all those who enjoy a plate of chicken-and-broccoli pasta, it may come as a surprise to learn it packs 1,600 calories and a whopping 100 grams of fat -- more than three times as much as a Big Mac.
There's also no doubt that there's the potential for a more realistic awareness of calorie counts reaching a vast audience. Americans spend nearly half of their food budget on away-from-home food, and 45 percent of adults call restaurants an "essential" part of their lifestyle, according to a report last year by Healthy Eating Research, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. A 2008 study in Los Angeles County concluded that residents' collective weight gain could be cut by 39 percent if menu labeling led to just 10 percent of chain restaurant patrons ordering meals with fewer calories.
Most of those consumers also underestimate the number of calories and fat in the foods they eat there, and they tend to make greater errors when the establishment promotes its menu items as healthy, the Robert Wood Johnson report said.
In time, if diners begin to embrace it, menu labeling could even trickle down to smaller restaurants, where owners concede their top priority is satisfying customer demands.
"I think you'll start seeing independent restaurants do it because it's good marketing, said Carrie Leishman, president and CEO of the Delaware Restaurant Association. "More and more customers are looking for it, and maybe they'll soon see it's good for their business."
But it's also satisfying those demands that virtually ensures that high-calorie goodies such as chicken wings and mozzarella sticks will remain, they say.
There's plenty of room in the business for both high-fat treats and health-conscious options, these owners stress. With or without menu labeling, Pizza By Elizabeths owner Betsy Leroy says she has to be mindful of the increasing number of customers who pay close attention to ingredients at her Greenville restaurant.
"I think that the more people know about healthy options, they do want to ask questions," Leroy said. "Almost every single day, I get an e-mail or two."
For customers, views on menu labeling range from pleased to somewhat put-upon. Those who see government paternalism in seat-belt laws and smoking bans hold fast to a strong streak of individualism, and fear what other edicts will come along to chip away at the notion of personal responsibility.
"I think people should be responsible for holding themselves accountable" for food choices, said Matt Haley, co-owner of six beach-area restaurants. "The whole calories-on-the-menu thing is kind of ludicrous in my opinion." "If they mandate what the calories count is going to be, what's next," Theresa Minichiello asked as she lunched at Panera Bread. "Personal accountability is being taken away. There's always a finger being pointed somewhere."
A healthier choice
At the same time, some note that personal choices do have the potential for impacting others -- when diet-related diseases impact so many, society as a whole bears the costs through higher health care premiums, noted diner Ben Cummins of Newark.
Restaurants can have a role in helping people make choices, but logic begins to go awry when the business bears too much of the responsibility, said Steve Torpey, manager of Stanley's Tavern in Brandywine Hundred.
"The concept of people being knowledgeable when they purchase makes sense," he said, "if it can be done as a point of reference, and not hold the restaurant or the restaurant group liable for that."
Locally, the law will affect national chain restaurants, even the owner-operated outposts, along with the larger Delaware-grown names -- Grotto Pizza has 21 locations, Seasons Pizza has 25 in four states, Pat's Family restaurant has 52 in four states. For these, assessing calorie counts will be a far more complicated endeavor than at mega-chains such as McDonald's, especially considering the potential for portion variance from location to location.
The challenge would have been worse if the industry hadn't been successful in limiting restaurants' liability, Leishman said. Otherwise, consumers might have been able to sue if a worker accidentally served up an extra big scoop on an ice cream cone, for example.
It would be better if restaurants had the option to place the calorie counts in a less prominent spot, allowing customers to avoid ugly realities and enjoy their meal, Torpey said. Some people, he has learned, simply don't want to know.
"The Buffalo wing replaced nachos as our No. 1 appetizer, and that happened several years ago," he said. "You know they weren't going for healthy when they switched from nachos to Buffalo wings." |
