Lost in the weeds (and there are a lot of them) of the health care bill, whoops – law, is a provision that requires most fast food restaurants to uniformly post calorie counts.
And that means posting them so someone can actually read them and use them. No teeny, tiny print on the soggy part of the burger wrapper. No little sign in a back hall near the bathroom.
The FDA has to come up with a national standard for menu labeling that will be appropriate for and required by all fast food establishments with 20 or more locations. That’s about 200,000 restaurants nationwide. And the labeling standards will override all the ones that have been popping up lately city by city and making these same restaurants a little crazy with the inconsistency.
Yup – these guys were actually in favor of a one standard deal.
And one of the main people you can thank for this – Connecticut’s own Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of New Haven. 
DeLauro, Chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, and Food and Drug Administration and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, proposed this as the MEAL Act back in 2003.
Let’s repeat that – 2003.
Again — 2003. How many calories over the dam since then? Huh? What were we waiting for?
“I am delighted that menu labeling has been included in the historic health care reform legislation that President Obama signed into law today,” DeLauro said in a statement. “Americans will now be able to make more informed choices about the food they are eating, and with childhood obesity rates tripling over the last 30 years, this legislation is imperative to the health of our nation.”
Of course in January the Journal of the American Dietetic Association published a survey by Tufts University of 10 chain restaurants that showed a heck of a lot of the calorie counts they did post were an average of 18 percent higher than they listed.
And, while we’re on the bad news, you know in 2008, according to the CDC, only one state, Colorado, had an obesity rate below 20% — it was 18.5%. Connecticut was actually pretty good at 21%.
Recently the New York Times reported things have leveled off. Yeah, so what’s the good news? The story said: nearly 34% of adults are obese, more than double the percentage 30 years ago and 17.
Oh geez – one battle at a time.