Second Attempt To Put Calorie Content on Menus

The city is pushing forward with a second attempt at requiring fast food restaurants to post calorie information on menus.

Under a new proposal outlined yesterday, the city's health department would require chain restaurants with at least 15 franchises nationally to post calorie information. The previous requirement, struck down by a federal judge last month, applied to restaurants that already posted calorie information as of March 2007.

"There is a clear link between chain restaurants, particularly fast food, and obesity," the city's health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden, said yesterday, repeating a familiar refrain.

Last month, Judge Richard Holwell handed down a decision striking down the city's requirement that fast food restaurants disclose calorie information on menus. The decision left open the possibility for future regulation by outlining how the city might rewrite the legislation.

"The court indicated that if we did it a different way, we wouldn't be pre-empted by federal law," Dr. Frieden said.

Under the new proposal, calorie information would have to be posted as prominently as the item's name and price, but the font size could mirror the smaller of the two.

Information could also be "associated" with menu items instead of adjacent to them, and in some cases, information could be posted on food item tags instead of on menu boards. Temporary items, or food items on the menu for 30 days or less, would be excluded from the requirement.

If adopted, the regulation would take effect March 31.

"We may have lost the battle, but we won the war," the health department's assistant commissioner for chronic disease prevention and control, Dr. Lynn Silver, told members of the health department's board yesterday.

The new proposal is rankling the restaurant industry. "Here we go again," the executive vice president of the New York State Restaurant Association, Charles Hunt, said yesterday.

"Our arguments against this are the same as they were," Mr. Hunt said. "The biggest problem that we have with this is the fact that this puts a burden on a lot of small businesses."

He said the new proposal was "much broader" than the original one.

"This is a case of the government micromanaging small business," he said.