Restaurants Cater To Diners’ Appetite For Healthy Diet More Eateries Disclose Nutritional Value Of Menu Items

At Silver Diner restaurants, the veggie chili, herb chicken sandwich, “world’s lightest sundae” and a dozen other dishes get red heart symbols on the menu to let patrons know what’s good for them.

And a fact sheet on your table provides data on the fat, cholesterol, calories and salt content of every menu selection.

Could this be the future of dining out in America? The National Restaurant Association hopes so.

The trade group is urging its 15,000 members - mostly small, independent restaurants - to overhaul their bills of fare in anticipation of government requirements to standardize health claims on menus. It suggests that restaurants have a dietician or nutritionist review menus, use computer programs to analyze recipes or hire a lab to do it.

“We’re trying to warn them that it’s time to think about this more carefully,” said Jeffrey Prince, the association’s senior director.

The Food and Drug Administration is finalizing regulations that the restaurant association believes will set strict criteria for claims about items being “low-fat,” “lite” or even just “healthy.”

Required by the 1990 food law that brought easier-to-read nutrition labels to packaged and processed foods last spring, the pending rules would only apply to restaurants that make health claims on their menus.

“The intent is basically to provide consumers with some assurance that any health or nutritional claims made on restaurant menus have a reasonable basis to them,” explained FDA spokesman Brad Stone.

Some larger restaurant chains - McDonald’s, for example - have made nutritional information available to their patrons for years.

“We’re simply trying to teach them that they can’t make nutrition claims under this system without getting some sort of professional advice and consultation,” Prince said.

Says Bob Giaimo, co-owner of the Silver Diner chain based in Rockville, Md., a Washington suburb: “People want to eat healthy … but what the studies that come out often show is that their practices don’t match their aspirations.” He said he willingly revamped his menus to cure that “dietary schizophrenia.”

“We felt that by establishing what the basis of our healthy items are, we’ll get believability,” Giaimo said. “If you say something is ‘low-fat,’ what does it mean? If the public doesn’t know what it means then we all lose credibility.”

But some say the rules could upset the dining out experience by making it more difficult or more expensive to decide where to eat.

To comply, restaurants will have to pay. Giaimo estimated spending $100,000 last year for laboratory analysis of the food at the chain’s five Maryland and Virginia locations, new menus and other costs.

Most restaurants won’t have to do or spend quite as much as Giaimo, he said. Some may try to charge higher prices to recover the costs, but more business from consumers who know about the changes could offset them.

Or restaurants could stop making health claims altogether, doing a disservice to themselves and the 31 percent of adults who say they consider nutrition when deciding where to eat, Prince said.

Consumer groups welcomed the association’s effort.

“Consumers should be able to trust that the claims are accurate,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has been a vocal critic of fatty restaurant food.

Jacobson, whose group has also petitioned the FDA to implement the rules immediately, said consumers won’t be harmed if restaurants quit making such statements because “inaccurate claims can be just as misleading.”

American Dietetic Association spokeswoman Edith Hogan said the rules could help ease some people’s anxiety about eating out, as well as encourage others to do so more often.

“Everyone, jointly, should have a goal of providing information so people can make healthful choices about their diets,” she said. “People are eating out more than they ever have.”