New Rules May Change Restaurant Practices

Mmmm. Low-fat lobster in butter sauce. Heart-healthy fried shrimp.

How tempting they sound on a restaurant menu.

But any restaurant bold - or stupid - enough to have made such claims rarely had to worry about getting in trouble. For years, restaurants have been allowed to describe any menu item as low-fat, low-calorie or otherwise good for you without having to prove it.

With little fanfare, however, that gaping truth-in-advertising hole was closed May 2, when a U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulation took effect. The regulation requires all U.S. restaurants to be able to support specific health or nutritional claims made on their menus. Only items that bear a health claim are affected, and only for the specific claim: For example, a restaurant does not have to provide the fiber content of a food promoted as low-fat.

It’s the latest piece of the Food and Drug Administration’s labeling regulation, the same one that three years ago required manufacturers to place nutrition information on all packaged food. Another part of the FDA rule already in force requires restaurants to be able to back up nutritional claims made anywhere other than the menu - such as on signs.

Now that menus fall under the FDA rule, does that mean consumers will have all the information they need, clearly and concisely presented, to make wise food choices?

Not necessarily. Items on restaurant menus don’t always lend themselves to a simple nutritional breakdown, and the FDA rule gives restaurants leeway in how they provide the information. Consumers might have to do a lot of their own legwork to decipher the information, but the rules give them a good place to start.

One of their challenges will be in getting the information, because it doesn’t have to appear on the menu; restaurants are in compliance if they provide the information on request. And the information can come from several sources: a notebook that contains the nutritional breakdown, or a copy of the recipe. Restaurants also can get away with just showing the cookbook that the recipe came from, as long as it meets FDA approval.

“We are trying to make things as flexible as possible for restaurants,” says Michelle Smith, an FDA food technologist. “A lot of restaurants don’t know the vitamin content in a food or what cooking will do to vitamin A or vitamin C or whether it is high-fiber. The requirement is the very least information we think would still ensure the claim is accurate and so consumers will have enough information to evaluate the merits of that claim.”

No matter where the information comes from, consumers might not always get what they specifically want. For an item labeled “heart healthy,” for example, a restaurant has to be able to show the levels of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. But when it comes to showing levels of other nutrients, the restaurant has a choice. It has to be able to prove that the item contains at least 10 percent of the recommended daily allowance for only one of these nutrients: vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, calcium, protein or fiber.

Then there’s the matter of the chef: How do you know that he or she put in exactly what the recipe called for? The FDA says it plans spot checks to make sure that happens.

But the biggest “gotcha” is this: A restaurant can base its claims on “reference” amount - a standard, government-approved serving size - without regard to the actual portion size it serves. For instance, a risotto recipe comes in at 3 grams of fat per cup, a reference amount that fits a low-fat claim. But a restaurant might serve the risotto in 3-cup portions, for a total of 9 grams of fat. Because the reference amount is still 3 grams per cup, the restaurant still can call it low-fat.

The bottom line is, if you are truly on a restricted diet, ask plenty of questions about a menu item.