California Fast Food Restaurants to Include Nutritional Information on Menus

California has just become – thanks to last year’s signing of a landmark public health bill - the first state in the nation to force restaurants with at least 20 locations to provide nutritional information about the food they serve, such as number of calories and grams of saturated and trans fats.

Today (July 1st, 2009) marks the beginning of the first phase of the new law, which requires restaurants to include their menu’s nutritional information only in their brochures. Phase two – the inclusion of this information on menu boards – will take effect in 2011.

CFC was an outspoken proponent of SB 1420, a bill authored by State Senator Alex Padilla, and signed by the Governor in 2008. The new law is much more than just an effort to reduce obesity and heart disease – it’s about giving consumers the right to know what they’re putting in their bodies.

As a result, Californians will be allowed to make better, educated choices about the food they eat - a move favored by 84 percent of the public in a statewide poll taken in April of 2007.

Note: Click here to read a Sacramento Bee article published on July 14th about the substantial health improvements ALREADY being seen in California restaurants as a result of the new law!

Unfortunately, billion dollar fast food and junk food companies continue to saturate the public with advertisements, much of which is targeted toward children and youth.

A recent study by UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research reported that obesity and overweight add $7.7 billion to California’s annual medical costs. Indeed, California has experienced one of the fastest rates of increase in adult obesity of any state in the nation.  

According to recent findings by the California Obesity Prevention Initiative (COPI),  one- third of children, one in four teens, and over half of all adults are overweight or obese and are increasingly suffering from nutrition-related illnesses that normally occur in adulthood, such as type-2 diabetes and pre-hypertension. The same study found that poor diet and physical inactivity are also the second leading causes of death and disability.

Due to the public becoming more informed about the negative health effects of fast food and junk food diets, some in the industry have offered lower fat, lower calorie and more natural foods.

We applaud these steps, but we also recognize that they have been responses to revelations about the negative health implications of the diet that food industry leaders have pushed on consumers for decades.

Therefore, Padilla’s proposal should only be viewed as a first - although critical - step of a much larger and growing effort to combat obesity and the associated health risks and costs. Other steps CFC supports are restricting the sale of unhealthy foods in our schools and requiring prominent disclosures of fat, sugar and calorie content as well as artificial additives and chemicals in advertisements at the point of sale.

When considering the breadth of our nation’s current health crisis, requiring fast food chains to post nutritional information on their menus is by no means a cure all solution. But, it does recognize that consumers can’t possibly make a healthy choice without knowing the content of the food they are eating.

According to the San Jose Mercury News – whose article on the new law can be read here – 17,000 of the state's 80,000 restaurants will be affected.