By Dale J. Venturini
President & CEO, Rhode Island Hospitality Association
Imagine walking into a fine dining restaurant and the server hands you the menu, the wine list and a five inch-thick nutrition guide to every item used in the preparation of your meal. Better yet, as you order, your waiter punches in your dinner choices, including portion sizes, sides, marinades, sauces and seasonings into a special calculator to determine the nutritional value and components of your meal.
It is conceivable that the next step is to make restaurants responsible for managing their guests’ caloric intake during a meal and, to refuse service to patrons who order unhealthy options or those who exceed their daily caloric and fat allowance.
In the nation’s never ending quest to become more fit and healthy, the latest trend in legislation is menu labeling. The idea behind menu labeling is quite altruistic – to arm the public with the information they need to make good choices when dining out. But, in reality, a one-size fits all labeling mandate will never work.
Most national quick service restaurants make available nutritional information for all products, typically on their website, tray liners and wall size posters. National quick service restaurants are large corporations with state-of-the-art kitchens and scientific methods of producing food items and the staff to breakdown each food item into its individual nutritional components. That can’t be said for smaller quick service restaurants or the independent restaurateur.
Why won’t a “one size fits all” labeling mandate work?
A restaurant meal is very different from packaged foods sold in a box or a can. Restaurant meals vary from chef to chef and day to day, based on available ingredients, market prices or seasonal availability. The humanization in the preparation of food makes it impossible to standardize food products.
Hold the Mayo… More than seven in 10 restaurant guests customize their meals. Whether it’s asking for mustard instead of mayonnaise, adding extra cheese to your burger, or choosing skim milk over whole milk, simple requests can significantly alter the nutrition content of a menu item. There is no practical, one-size-fits-all way to mandate labels for restaurant menus.
Three in four meals are prepared at home. If the aim is to effectively address the complex issue of obesity in America, healthy lifestyles, personal responsibility, regular exercise and moderation are the solutions to this problem. Putting responsibility on the foodservice industry, in particular, restaurants, does not address the issue – it merely adds to the problem of personal irresponsibility.
Nutrition Education is the heart of the issue. Restaurants should have the flexibility and freedom in how they choose to provide nutrition data to their customers. Rather than mandate an arbitrary number next to food items, we should educate Americans on how to put together a healthy diet and exercise plan that is best for their lifestyle and body types.
Restaurants don’t need mandates to offer healthy options. Last year, the battle cry to ban trans fat was shouted in state houses and city halls across the country. Yet, upon further investigation, it proved to be nearly impossible to completely rid our diet of trans fat. That did not stop the foodservice industry and the public from doing the right thing. The foodservice industry, and the American public, has made tremendous strides towards ridding or limiting the intake of trans fat in our diet. The public is more informed and is moving the industry by their buying decisions, not by government mandates.
Imagine walking into a fine dining restaurant and the server hands you the menu, the wine list and a five inch-thick nutrition guide to every item used in the preparation of your meal. Better yet, as you order, your waiter punches in your dinner choices, including portion sizes, sides, marinades, sauces and seasonings into a special calculator to determine the nutritional value and components of your meal.
It is conceivable that the next step is to make restaurants responsible for managing their guests’ caloric intake during a meal and, to refuse service to patrons who order unhealthy options or those who exceed their daily caloric and fat allowance.
In the nation’s never ending quest to become more fit and healthy, the latest trend in legislation is menu labeling. The idea behind menu labeling is quite altruistic – to arm the public with the information they need to make good choices when dining out. But, in reality, a one-size fits all labeling mandate will never work.
Most national quick service restaurants make available nutritional information for all products, typically on their website, tray liners and wall size posters. National quick service restaurants are large corporations with state-of-the-art kitchens and scientific methods of producing food items and the staff to breakdown each food item into its individual nutritional components. That can’t be said for smaller quick service restaurants or the independent restaurateur.
Why won’t a “one size fits all” labeling mandate work?
A restaurant meal is very different from packaged foods sold in a box or a can. Restaurant meals vary from chef to chef and day to day, based on available ingredients, market prices or seasonal availability. The humanization in the preparation of food makes it impossible to standardize food products.
Hold the Mayo… More than seven in 10 restaurant guests customize their meals. Whether it’s asking for mustard instead of mayonnaise, adding extra cheese to your burger, or choosing skim milk over whole milk, simple requests can significantly alter the nutrition content of a menu item. There is no practical, one-size-fits-all way to mandate labels for restaurant menus.
Three in four meals are prepared at home. If the aim is to effectively address the complex issue of obesity in America, healthy lifestyles, personal responsibility, regular exercise and moderation are the solutions to this problem. Putting responsibility on the foodservice industry, in particular, restaurants, does not address the issue – it merely adds to the problem of personal irresponsibility.
Nutrition Education is the heart of the issue. Restaurants should have the flexibility and freedom in how they choose to provide nutrition data to their customers. Rather than mandate an arbitrary number next to food items, we should educate Americans on how to put together a healthy diet and exercise plan that is best for their lifestyle and body types.
Restaurants don’t need mandates to offer healthy options. Last year, the battle cry to ban trans fat was shouted in state houses and city halls across the country. Yet, upon further investigation, it proved to be nearly impossible to completely rid our diet of trans fat. That did not stop the foodservice industry and the public from doing the right thing. The foodservice industry, and the American public, has made tremendous strides towards ridding or limiting the intake of trans fat in our diet. The public is more informed and is moving the industry by their buying decisions, not by government mandates.
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