Restaurants skip required nutrition labels
By David Lazarus, Los Angeles Times
Only five years ago, California enacted a pioneering law that required restaurants to put nutritional information on menus. For the first time, consumers were empowered to make informed decisions about what they ate.
So it seems crazy that it’s even a question: Does the law still exist?
If you ask state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima, the author of the menu-labeling law, the answer is yes.
But that’s not how the California Restaurant Association sees it. It believes Padilla’s law has been repealed.
So does the California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health, whose members are responsible for enforcing menu labeling at the local level.
Or, in the words of Angelo Bellomo, environmental health director at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health: “There is a law that requires it, but both the federal government and the state government have decided not to enforce it.”
interesting that Applebee’s (not exactly always your source of low cal eating) does have calorie and fat content on its menu! The numbers aren’t always what you would expect (and that goes for either lower or higher) – it has changed my menu choices and of the others I am with.
Save us from ourselves!