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Required calorie counts not likely on Madison menus

But local nutritionists say New York City law has merit

Samara Kalk Derby  —  7/23/2008 6:15 am

Madison has toyed with banning plastic bags, and a member of the city's Plan Commission recently suggested blocking additional restaurant drive-throughs, but no one here has proposed forcing chain restaurants to post the calorie count of each food item as is now the case in New York City.

New York became the first city in the country to implement a law that requires chains to display calorie counts in the same size and font as the price of each menu item.

Since May, health inspectors have had the authority to cite restaurants not conforming to the city's calorie-posting rules, but legal action delayed enforcement of it until Saturday. Violations now carry fines between $200 and $2,000.

Even one of the Madison City Council's most health-minded members says he would be opposed to such an effort here, but local nutritionists say there is at least some merit to the New York City law.

"Like most ideas, there are pluses and minuses," said Dale Schoeller, a UW-Madison professor of nutritional sciences. "The obvious plus is that for those people who are interested in making informed decisions about what they eat, it provides them with data. They can look at the menu and make a choice.

"The minus is that it's expensive. It requires new menus. In some cases, it requires the restaurant to be able to obtain the information to be able to put on the menus."

Large chain restaurants may have the information already, but for smaller restaurants it would be difficult to pull together, Schoeller said.

"The question is, is there a cost benefit?" asked Schoeller. "And that really comes down to how many people make use of that information or would make use of that information on the menu."

Based upon research of food labels, nearly every packaged food in the grocery store has a nutritional label, but most people pay no attention to them, Schoeller said.

"It's the minority of shoppers that make use of that information. Here you are putting into law a requirement that establishments need to spend money to put this information in front of their customers, but most won't make use of it," according to Schoeller. "So it is not likely to be cost-effective at this point in time. I hope we can educate the consumer more in the future and make it far more worthwhile."

But Deborah Roussos, a registered dietitian with Group Health Cooperative HMO, said she likes the idea.

"I think people want to be informed. It's hard to guess what's in food many times. I like the idea of having some type of nutrition labeling," she said, adding that smaller restaurants should be exempt the way smaller businesses don't have to comply with nutrition labeling on grocery items.

"It would probably have to be a bigger organization to do that type of calculation on its food. It might be a burden for smaller organizations to do that."

Her husband, John Roussos, owner of the New Orleans Take Out restaurant on Fordem Avenue, also likes the idea.

"Give people access to the information," he said. "I have no problem with it. I think that if people want that information, it's probably best."

As a chef, Roussos said he wants people to be involved with their food on all levels, not just aesthetically.

"People are health-conscious," Roussos said. "They want to know how much fat, how much trans fat, is in their food, how much sodium."

Some of his customers have food allergies and other particular needs, something that's been increasing in the last 25 years, he said.

Roussos said he gets quizzed a lot about what's in his recipes. "People are more interested in what's in their food these days," he said.

It used to just be shrimp allergies, he said, then peanut allergies, then chicken. Now there are a lot of people with celiac disease, an inability to tolerate wheat.

Roussos pointed out that it would be costly for a small operation like his to provide detailed nutritional analysis. It makes more sense for the chains, which provide a large percentage of the food consumed in this country, he said.

"Let's face it, they are not known for their nutrition and good balance," Roussos said. "They are known more for too much fat and too much sodium."

All of his food is already screened by a registered dietitian, Roussos said. His wife handles the duties, and has forced him to cut down on butter in his sauces over the years.

"She says, 'John, do you think your customers are really going to miss it if you pull out a pound of butter from that batch of Creole sauce?' " Roussos said. "She was right. It was healthier. It didn't need it."

Elaine Rosenblatt, a UW School of Nursing professor who specializes in weight loss counseling and obesity, said it is always good for people to become more aware.

She said it's not enough to just list calories. It's also important to break down menu items by carbohydrates, sodium and fat content.

"My only concern is how accurate is it. I don't know what New York City is doing to assure that what the restaurant says is 1,000 calories is really 1,000 calories," Rosenblatt said. "I don't know how the restaurants are going to compute that. I suspect most restaurants don't have nutritionists.

"If we do something like this we need to give the public some sort of assurance that this is accurate information."

Greg Frank, a managing partner in Tex Tubb's Taco Palace, said it would be tricky for his restaurant, with its large, complex menu, to come up with exact numbers on some recipes.

"On fast-food menus, I think it is a wonderful thing to try to give consumers as much information as possible," Frank said.

Restaurants need to take responsibility to offer healthy options for consumers and be careful about the products they buy to serve to their customers, Frank said.

For example, Tex Tubb's has a list of its products without flour that can be eaten by people with celiac disease.

Tex-Mex purveyors are slow to give restaurants information on fat and calorie counts, Frank said. "But we are working as hard as we can to provide that for our customers," he added.

Ald. Mark Clear, who recently led a push for the City Council to adopt recommendations that would give Madison a top designation from the League of American Bicyclists, said he is not in favor of mandating calorie counts, especially on a city level.

"There's been a lot of talk lately about the council getting back to basics and focusing on the important stuff. This seems like it would take us back to being off-track," Clear said.

"For the most part, people are pretty aware of what they are eating and probably people who care about it know that fast food doesn't tend to be the most nutritious. And those who aren't aware of it probably wouldn't be those who would care about it anyway.

"Most fast-food restaurants have that information available, although it might not be the most accessible. It's not right out front with the menus. It seems kind of inappropriate to mandate on one type of restaurant, too."

Rosenblatt and Schoeller, the UW professors, pointed out that McDonald's and a lot of the bigger restaurant chains already provide nutritional information on their Web sites. These restaurants post not only calorie content, but also information on carbohydrates and fat.

"I hope that most of the restaurants here monitor that project and see how well it goes," Rosenblatt said about the New York initiative. "I think that people are interested in what they are about to bite down on. And if they choose not to pay attention to it, they can still avoid it.

"But for a lot of the population that is very conscious of what they are eating, I think it will be eye-opening."

Samara Kalk Derby  —  7/23/2008 6:15 am