NEW YORK: New York City has banned trans fats at restaurants, posted calorie counts on menus and tried, unsuccessfully, to limit the size of sodas.
Under a plan to be presented by the de Blasio administration yesterday, many chain restaurants would have to post a warning label on the menu beside any dish that has more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium, the daily limit recommended by many nutritionists.
The amount is akin to a teaspoon of salt, and food items that contain it — such as a half-rack of ribs at TGI Fridays (2,420 milligrams), or the chicken fajitas at Applebee’s (4,800 milligrams) — would be denoted by a small icon of a saltshaker.
The measure, which requires approval by the Board of Health, could take effect as soon as December. It is the first foray by Mayor Bill de Blasio into the kind of high-profile, and often controversial, public health policies championed by his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg.
“It’s quite difficult for consumers to understand which products might have too much sodium in them,” said Sonia Angell, a deputy commissioner at the city’s Health Department, who pointed to links between high sodium intake and a greater risk of heart disease and high blood pressure.
Attempts by the city to regulate New Yorkers’ eating habits have often been resisted by restaurant groups, which call such rules onerous and an infringement on consumer rights. De Blasio’s sodium proposal was no exception.
“Restaurants in New York City are already heavily regulated at every level,” said Melissa Fleischut, president of the New York State Restaurant Association.
Pointing to a variety of federal and local rules on nutrition labels, she added, “The composition of menus may soon have more warning labels than food products.”
If passed, the proposal, which was reported by the Associated Press, would affect mainly restaurants with 15 establishments or more in New York City, along with some movie theatres and ballpark concession stands.
Officials said about 10% of menu items would require labels.
Still, many staples of fast-food chains would fall short of the labeling threshold, like a Whopper with cheese at Burger King (1,260 milligrams of sodium) or KFC’s chicken potpie (1,970 milligrams).
“It’s a rather conservative choice of benchmark,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition group.
“It seems pretty generous to the restaurant industry: up to a whole day’s worth of sodium, and you don’t have to put an icon on your menu,” he said.
But, Jacobson added, “Hopefully it will guide people away from these kinds of meals.”
This is not the first time that a New York City mayor has taken on salty foods. Bloomberg — despite his own predilection for sodium — introduced the National Salt Reduction Initiative to encourage chains to lower the amount of sodium in their products voluntarily.
By the end of this year, Bloomberg’s effort to print calorie counts on menus is going national: The Food and Drug Administration is to require calorie counts in national restaurant chains, movie theaters and pizza parlors.
Those requirements could pose a legal wrinkle for the city’s sodium plan, since states and municipalities would be prohibited from adding their own nutrition labels to places covered under federal rules.
City officials said their plan would pass muster because the saltshaker functions as a “warning label,” not a nutritional one.
De Blasio also faced criticism on Tuesday from a traditional ally, Letitia James, the public advocate, for taking his proposal directly to the Board of Health — the same method used by Bloomberg on soda limits.
“We have seen this happen before with the failed soda ban,” said James, who like the mayor is a Democrat. “The intention to improve the health of New Yorkers is good. But the process is wrong. There is no reason not to send this through the elected City Council.” ©2015 The New York Times