When Sacramento lobbyist Kari Dohn Decker was in Manhattan last week, she stopped by a Starbucks at 48th and Lexington for a coffee and a snack. What she saw startled her.
Starbucks, by order of New York City, had listed the calories in every item on its menu. The calorie content of each of the company's famous coffee drinks was disclosed on a large menu board behind the baristas. And the calories in the food items were displayed on price cards next to each of them in the case.
Decker's favorite scone was listed at 480 calories. Same for a chocolate old-fashioned donut. Even a healthy-looking muffin contained more than 300 calories. She spurned them all and grabbed a cinnamon raisin bagel – no butter – instead.
"I loved having the calories on the board," Decker said. "They were all a lot higher than I imagined. It definitely changed my decision."
Soon, perhaps, Decker and millions of her fellow Californians might be having the same experience back home. The Legislature has passed a bill that would have California follow New York's lead and become the first state in the country to require chain restaurants to disclose nutrition information in their menus and post it on their menu boards.
The bill on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk – SB 1420 – would require chain restaurants with 20 or more locations to offer pamphlets starting next summer disclosing the calories, fat, carbohydrates and sodium in each menu item. The pamphlets would also have to state that the recommended limits for a 2,000-calorie daily diet are 20 grams of saturated fat and 2,300 milligrams of sodium.
By Jan. 1, 2011, those restaurants would have to print the calorie counts of each item on their menus and post it on their menu boards. At that point, they would no longer have to offer the more comprehensive pamphlets.
Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar bill a year ago, saying it was too burdensome on restaurants and was unfair because it singled out some while allowing others to escape the mandate.
While those objections could still hold, the governor also implored the restaurant industry a year ago to join him and public health activists to find ways to accomplish the legislation's goals. And last week, the California Restaurant Association endorsed SB 1420, mainly because it now includes a provision prohibiting local governments from adopting their own, tougher menu standards.
Jot Condie, the association's president, told me his members believed a single, statewide standard would be better than a thousand or more local rules.
"This prevents local governments from implementing their own local provisions," he said. "If different counties and cities had each adopted their own ordinances, it would have made it impossible to keep track of them all and comply."
Advocates for the bill, including the American Heart Association, say they believe that consumers will be more likely to trim their calorie intake, and their waistlines, if they can see the consequences of their eating habits in front of them as they order. The Los Angeles County Public Health Department figures that if the average patron drops 100 calories from his or her order, menu labeling would slice 39 percent from the average annual weight gain of 6.75 million pounds in the county population age 5 and older.
Would menu labeling lead to widespread changes in behavior? It might. But the limited studies available on the topic suggest that such a transformation would not be automatic.
One experiment in England provided nutrition information to restaurant patrons and found that it had little or no effect on what they ate. In fact, there was some evidence that labeling an item as "low fat" actually drove customers away from it – presumably because they thought a low-fat item wouldn't taste as good as others. Researchers found similar results when an Army cafeteria offered healthier lunchtime menu items and labeled them.
Other studies found that consumers often react to labeling by eating more low-fat or low-calorie foods, as if they have a calorie quota and must fill it up one way or another.
Call The Bee's Daniel Weintraub, (916) 321-1914
