Chain restaurants are being targeted in two very empty-calorie bills in Olympia this session.
Proposed legislation in the Senate would require chain restaurants to provide nutrition information for all menu items. We don’t know where the lawmakers sponsoring the bills eat, but apparently it is not at chain restaurants.
If they did, they would realize the majority of chain restaurants already list such information.
Last year, the King County Board of Health voted to ban the use of trans fats in restaurants and require chain restaurants with 10 or more locations to list nutritional information on their menus. Senate Bill 6505 is identical to the King County regulations, which go into effect in August. The nutritional information must be listed next to each item on the menu.
Senate Bill 6659 would require such information for restaurants with 25 or more locations. It would allow restaurants to post the information in different places other than the menu, such as on packaging, at the counter or table, on a poster, brochure or electronic display.
Both bills are overreaching, arbitrary and unnecessary.
Picking on chain restaurants may make some people feel good, but it’s patently unfair. It creates unnecessary costs, and it’s wrong to impose regulations on certain businesses just because they’re popular and profitable.
The bills are also way behind the times. Fewer things are better documented than the nutritional content of fast food. It’s all there, from inside the stores themselves, to online databases. From Arby’s Pecan Sticky Bun 4 Pack to McDonald’s Big Mac, the whole caloric catalog is widely available.
Yet the prime sponsor of SB 6505, Sen. Rodney Tom, D-Bellevue, used McDonald’s as an example to “shock” his fellow lawmakers. He asked them which McDonald’s menu items contain the most calories: A Big Mac, two egg McMuffins, a large chocolate shake or four hamburgers.
“The consumers want to make the right choices,” Tom said. “You can be thinking, ‘I’m going to take the chocolate shake and skip the hamburger,’ but that would be the worst choice for you.”
Actually, none of those choices are very smart. (Duh.)
But, in addition to already listing their nutritional information, most chain restaurants now also offer healthier fare: Grilled chicken salads, fruit, slimmer sandwiches.
Somehow, market forces alone were enough to spur those changes.
The obesity epidemic cannot be legislated away. Imposing arbitrary, punitive regulations is not what lawmakers were elected, or asked, to do.
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