Restaurants and Institutions

Dennis Lombardi

Is It Time to Put Nutrition Info on the Menu?
September 22, 2008

Now that I have your attention, let me explain. This may sound like heresy, but perhaps we should embrace putting nutritional information on the menu. If we adopt a reasonable approach and actively implement that plan, we may save ourselves from an array of unreasonable requirements.

The trend is clear, municipal and state legislatures are looking for ways to protect consumers from themselves by requiring restaurant chains to post nutritional information on the menu. 

Some of these local initiatives are reasonable, but many are not. In addition, they all seem to vary on requirements. Imagine running a national chain that had to comply with 20, 40, or 60 (you pick a number) different local disclosure requirements.

Having an industry standard that is visible to legislatures and that is being implemented would at least provide an alternative, or a standard, that local and state governments could utilize.

From my viewpoint, we have never been all that good as an industry at flexing our political muscle.  I doubt we will be able to stop the trend toward nutritional disclosure on menus, so our best bet is to influence the process to something workable and reasonable. 

If we don’t we may be muttering to ourselves one of Will Roger’s more famous quotes, “Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.”

Posted by Dennis Lombardi on September 22, 2008 | Comments (0)