Under a Food and Drug Administration rule released past year, restaurant chains and some other retailers that sell prepared food were supposed to provide customers with calorie counts by December 1, 2015.
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Restaurants will have another year to put calorie counts on their menus, as the federal government bowed to vociferous demands for a delay to the controversial rule.
The move comes amid persistent pressure on the agency from various corners of the food industry to delay enforcement of the rules. It’s an extension that the agency only came to after some careful deliberation and dialogue with the food industry itself, according to the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner For Foods and Veterinary Medicine, Michael R. Taylor.
Pizza parlors will only have to display estimated calories ranges, instead of the exact figures required from other chain restaurants, but the information will also need to be available when ordering online.
The FDA is still planning to issue a “draft guidance document” to businesses further clarifying the rules and will “provide educational and technical assistance for the covered businesses and for our state, local, and tribal regulatory partners to support reasonable and consistent compliance nationwide”.
Critics said the delay was not a fatal blow, but was worrisome, as it would give the restaurant and grocery industries more time to lobby against the measure.
Restaurants and grocery stores will not have to comply with the contentious new rule until after the 2016 presidential election – at which time a Republican president could choose to scrap the rule altogether.
Calorie counting labeling on menu became a requirement for the first time in 2010 under the Obamacare reform.
Their arguments pointed at the fact that those responsible for the implementation of compulsory calorie counts on food menus are still in the dark regarding which specific foods fall under the compulsory labeling.
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Since Americans eat and drink about one-third of their calories away from home, the FDA’s proposed rules, making it obligatory for all chain restaurant to print calorie labels on their menus are fairly justified. Meanwhile, the decision targets foods that are prepared in grocery stores, convenience stores, bakeries, movie theaters, pizzerias, amusement parks or coffee shops. “There was simply no way that restaurants could comply in time”, Szabo writes. “It takes time to change signage, packaging and data systems – I understand that”.
