FDA Proposes That Restaurants Back Health Claims

Restaurants making health or nutritional claims on their menus will be required to substantiate them under new rules recommended by the Food and Drug Administration, the agency said Wednesday.

Reversing a policy that it established last fall in implementing a new food-labeling law, the FDA has decided that restaurants should adhere to the same standards on their menus as food manufacturers are required to follow in labeling products sold in grocery stores.

Proponents said that the move would add an important new source of information for health-conscious Americans as medical research continues to establish an association between diet and the development and prevention of certain conditions, such as cancer, high blood pressure and heart disease.

Until now, the labeling law had applied to food packages in the marketplace and to signs posted in restaurants. The decision to include restaurant menus is viewed as significant because it is estimated that Americans spend as much as half of their food dollars on restaurant meals.

FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler said that the change would require restaurants “to have a reasonable basis for their claims . . . that shows what they are saying has a basis in truth.”

The proposals will be subject to a 60-day public comment period before final regulations are released. The health claims rule for restaurants is expected to become effective in late 1993 and the nutritional content claims in late 1994. Enforcement of the new regulation would likely fall to the states, which were given such authority by the labeling law.

The change represents a major departure from the regulations announced last fall during the waning days of the George Bush Administration, when restaurant menus were granted an exemption from the labeling rules as part of a deal struck between two Bush Cabinet secretaries, Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan and Agriculture Secretary Edward Madigan.

But FDA officials, never happy with the exemption, moved to reverse the policy under the new Administration, sources said.

Furthermore, the agency has come under heavy pressure from the authors of the original food-labeling legislation, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), who insisted that the exemption was illegal under the law. The exemption is also the subject of a legal challenge filed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Public Citizen, two consumer groups.

The decision to change the policy was praised Wednesday by health and consumer groups and attacked by industry as an economic and logistic burden.

The labeling law is regarded as the most significant overhaul of food labels in the nation’s history. It gives consumers uniform information for the first time about serving sizes, descriptive terms such as “low calorie” or “reduced fat,” and about how nutrients fit into an average daily diet.

Now, restaurant menus will be required to comply with both health and nutritional claims as specified by the law.

For example, if a restaurant makes a health claim about one of its items, describing a dish as “heart healthy,” the menu also must define for consumers what that means. And the explanation must be consistent with current scientific knowledge about diet and heart disease--such as, “this dish is low in sodium and saturated fats.”

On the nutritional side, if the restaurant makes a claim, calling an item “low calorie,” for instance, the food must conform to the FDA definition of “low calorie,” meaning that the dish must contain fewer than 40 calories in what the FDA has stipulated is an average serving.

If the dish does not conform to that standard, the menu must tell consumers what the restaurant means by “low calorie.” For example, if the restaurant is calling the food “low calorie” only because the portion size is smaller than an average serving, the menu must say so. This rule differs from the requirements for packaged foods, which always must conform to the definition of the descriptive term on the label.

Jeffrey Prince, senior director of the National Restaurant Assn., which represents the majority of the nation’s commercial eating establishments, said that the new requirements would pose an economic hardship for the industry.

He said the industry expects that about 89% of the nation’s restaurant menus will have to be reprinted at an estimated price tag of $514 million.

But he said industry is “less concerned” about the cost of the changes than about their impact. The new rules could result in restaurants no longer promoting healthful meals on their menus, although it does not necessarily mean such foods will not be available, he said.

Waxman, however, said that the exemption was illegal and was “forced upon the FDA by the Bush White House, which allowed politics to prevail over law and sound public policy.”