NYC's new anti-obesity message to restaurant patrons

After the firefight over menu labeling, New York City knows better than to expressly target restaurants in its new push for healthier eating. But the products depicted in the campaign that commenced today aren’t exactly what you’d whip up at home for breakfast or lunch, unless you’re Rachael Ray or a chain R&D chef. The message of the Department of Health’s new ads is clear, even if the approach is coy: Think twice, or maybe a third time, before ordering that burrito, sub or muffin.

The ads started appearing this morning on city subways. New reports indicated that about every fifth car will feature the billboards, from now through January. An Associated Press report pegged the total “spend,” as they say in the advertising world, at $82,000.

“2000 calories a day is all that most adults should eat,” blares the placards, which will share subway real estate with ad space for impotence cures, English-language courses and dermatologists. Pictured below that headline are finger-foods that look decidedly restaurant-born. A flag in the items reveals the calories of each—475 in a muffin, for instance, or 1,170 in a burrito. One installment compares the calories content of a tunafish sub (530 calories) with a roast beef version (290 calories). “Choose less. Weigh less,” advises the ad copy. You can read it for yourself here.

The campaign carries the theme, “Read ‘em before you eat ‘em.” Clearly it plays off the city’s new menu-labeling requirements, which went into effect for some chain restaurants in April. Units of chains with at least 15 units nationwide are required to post calorie counts on their menus or menu boards for every item that is offered over an extended time.

Clearly the city is planning to call attention to the calorie counts by urging citizens to read them.

'An order for Sec. Paulson'

I’ve gotta be quick here because a call from the federal bail-out specialists could come at any second. I alerted them yesterday that an institution crucial to the financial health of New York-area restaurants, a venerable borrower called Romeo Enterprises, was teetering on the brink of insolvency. If they were willing to lend AIG $85 billion, they can certainly toss a few grand my way.

Then again, the government’s rescue efforts have been decidedly selective. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae got a bailout, as did the insurance giant whose past CEO, Hank Greenberg, still prompts Wall Street insiders to cross themselves and mutter a protective spell at the mention of his name (he was forced out in 2005 because of fraud allegations leveled by New York’s attack-dog attorney general at the time, Elliot Spitzer, who subsequently dropped the charges). Curiously, AIG got into trouble by insuring very complex financial securities, in effect assuring the backers they wouldn’t lose everything. Investors always say you get rewarded for risk, but the insurer’s role was to provide a safety net so some really big paybacks would be protected. Speculation, indeed.

When it looked as if gazillions would indeed be lost because of AIG’s problems, the government stepped in, arguing that it had to avert economic disaster. And, indeed, the company’s failure might’ve emptied plenty of portfolios and pockets. Just ask the foodservice establishments that counted Lehman Brothers among their major sources of business. Delis and restaurants that served the banker are already feeling the loss, according to news reports, when Lehman filed for bankruptcy only a few days ago.

They and other small businesses are getting walloped because the feds decided Lehman had to sink or swim on its own strengths, whereas AIG is too big of a fish to let flounder.

In other words, if you’re wearing a suit, “Here’s a life preserver.” But if those are foodservice whites on your back, “We prefer to let the market regulate itself.” Size clearly does matter when it comes to portfolios and paychecks.

Maybe those strained delis and restaurants can reach out to AIG’s business associates. Perhaps with a promotional Fat Cat sandwich, made with pork, of course.

And they should be sure to come up with something higher end for the big-portfolio'd sort who’s expected by many in the blogosphere to be brought in as AIG's savior. His name is Hank Greenberg.

A turn for the worse on menu labeling

One of the industry’s key defenses against menu labeling has been rendered useless by a recent court filing that could also break up the trade’s Hail Mary play for softening the impact of nutrition-disclosure mandates. The actions, little-noticed outside of the regulatory and legal worlds, came not from the restaurant business’ usual adversaries on diet-related matters, but from the hoped-for ally known as the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.

The development was the latest in the prolonged legal effort by the New York State Restaurant Association to overturn a New York City requirement that local chain units post calorie counts on menu boards, regular bills of fare and drink menus. The association filed a lawsuit in federal court that asserts the city does not have the authority to regulate nutrition disclosure, since that power resides exclusively with the FDA.

Not so, the FDA itself said in a friend-of-the-court brief that was filed on May 29. The agency, which has been expressly granted the right to specify and police what nutritional information is printed on grocery-store items, told the court that it doesn’t have a hammerlock on menu disclosure. Only if a restaurant makes a health-related claim—such as pronouncing an item life-prolonging or cholesterol-reducing—do FDA rules pre-empt state or local regulations, the agency said.

The take-away for state and local jurisdictions that want to require restaurants on their turf to divulge nutrition information for all menu items: Knock yourself out.

The filing by the FDA, which had been requested by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in effect scuttles the pre-emption challenge that a number of restaurant groups have either eyed or actually tried in their efforts to fend off labeling mandates. But the damage to the industry’s defense strategies could go farther than that.

As I’ve mentioned in a column, there’s a growing sensibility within the restaurant industry that menu-labeling requirements are going to be a new reality, no matter how unpleasant the trade might find them. It’s a tide that the business may simply not be able to hold back. Some broad-minded thinkers are proposing behind closed doors that the industry temper the effects by suggesting the federal government take the lead on menu disclosure.

That way, the proponents argue, chains would have to meet only one set of disclosure standards from coast to coast, instead of a hodgepodge of obligations that could vary from town to town. Chains that operate in both Seattle and New York, for instance, will be required to provide one set of info on the West Coast, and another type on the East. Branches in the two cities will almost certainly end up with different types of menus and menu boards, which may be still different from the ones required for Santa Clara or San Francisco Counties in California.

But now the FDA has said that Congress didn’t want it to regulate restaurants, so states, counties and municipalities are the ones to fill the void. I’m certainly no lobbyist, but it seems that the industry would have to push legislation through Congress that would call for menu regulation by the agency. It could be one of the smartest things the industry has ever done. But a firefight will almost certainly erupt as rank-and-file operators balk at the notion of asking for government regulation. In the minds of those who are still thinking in yesterday’s terms, it’d be like pushing for a tax increase.

And then there’s the wild card that was dealt to the industry just this past week. A group of consumers has sued Applebee’s and Brinker International for allegedly misstating the nutritional information they voluntarily post on their menus. The class action suits allege that Applebee’s understated the fat content of its Weight Watchers-branded selections, and that Brinker similarly bent the truth the same on Chili’s Guiltless Grill section.

Those brands voluntarily disclosed information and ended up getting sued. When chain after chain after chain is posting analytical data to meet disclosure requirements, won’t the industry become the barrel where litigation-minded lawyers and consumers can draw a bead on the next fat tuna they’d like to fillet in court?

If the industry does proceed with its efforts to legislate federal labeling regulation, it would be well served to also incorporate some defenses against bounty-hunting of that nature.

A yellow light on voluntary menu labeling

Chain executives will be hyperventilating into brown paper bags next week when the push for menu labeling is taken up again by New York City’s health department—or as some restaurateurs view it, the castle of the mad Dr. Friedan. The agency will invite the public to comment Tuesday on its latest calorie-disclosure proposal, which is widely seen as a possible model for jurisdictions throughout the country. But it’s probably better they copy that measure than reach across the Atlantic for the approach now being pursued in the U.K.

The Food Standards Agency—Britain’s Food and Drug Administration—is pressing McDonald’s, Compass and other multi-restaurant companies to go beyond merely disclosing nutritional information on their menus, according to London press reports. The regulators want the big operations to steer patrons toward more healthful choices, and away from options with high sugar, salt or fat contents, by using stoplight symbol. A green circle, like a “go” light, would designate the best choices. A red circle would send a not-so-subtle message of, “Stop!” And a yellow indicator would be the equivalent of a Larry David-like, “Eh.”

Lest you think the restaurant industry is crying wolf, consider that the alert system is already being voluntarily followed by a number of major supermarket chains across the pond. The foodservice chains are being asked to adopt the program voluntarily, but the esteemed London Telegraph said the present “talks” could build into out-and-out pressure on the operators.

The news reports say that regulators are focusing their sales efforts on quick-service chains because children account for a big portion of their clientele. It’s the argument that the industry has struggled in vain to parry: Adults may be able to make an informed choice about what to eat, but how can you expect children to comprehend nutrition stats as they’re standing in line? Why not just give them a simple symbolic rating of each item?

It’s a powerful argument, and one the industry would no doubt like to bar from these shores.

The Big Cheese?

A new title was bestowed on the grand metropolis of New York last week, in part because of its sizeable restaurant industry: City Most Likely to be Infested with Rats (Fall Season). And, no, the news didn’t come from the Big Apple Chamber of Commerce.

The distinction was pinned to the broad chest of America’s cultural and commercial titan by two figures who are acclaimed for their knowledge of rodents, Dale Kaukeinen and Bruce Colvin. The pair studied data from the 2000 U.S. Census to determine what makes a city attractive to rats. Among the factors they identified was the resurgence of cities as residential areas and a resulting gentrification, which in turn have bolstered urban areas’ service and entertainment offerings. “This trend is proving to be an ideal environment for rodents due to the density of people and the abundance of food waste from residents, businesses and local eateries,” according to a statement on Kaukeinen and Colvin’s research, which was sponsored by a “rodenticide” supplier.

Among the other contributors they identified are “wacky weather,” defined as unseasonably warm and wet, and an end to the $12 million to $15 million in subsidies the federal government once passed along annually to communities for the fight against rodents.

Wielding the criteria they’d developed, the duo then ranked cities by their expected hospitability to rats this fall. New York topped the listing, followed by Houston, Boston, Louisville and Philadelphia. Among the surprises on the roster were El Paso, Texas, at No. 9 and San Jose, Calif., at No. 19.

Kaukeinen and Colvin suggested that fall is typically the height of the rodent tourism season for many U.S. cities. “As the weather cools,” the statement explains, “rats and mice move inside in search of food and shelter.” It’s when infestations are most likely to occur and “rodents reach their annual abundance,” it noted.

Our beloved Yankees may have been eliminated from the playoffs this fall. But let Cleveland try to touch us in the rat rankings. No wonder pitcher-attacking bugs seem to be its signature pest.