(http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cgi?TITLE=21&PART=101&SECT
ION=100&YEAR=1999&TYPE=TEXT)

http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/diet.fitness/10/24/restaurants.obesity.ap/in
dex.html

I would love to see restaurants provide the nutrition information for their
food on the menu.  I'm sure there are some things I've ordered in the past
that I *thought* were healthy choices when they really contained more
calories, fat, etc than I expected.  I often look for the 'heart healthy'
entrees when eating out as I hope they might be a little better than a
regular choice.  I also like to eat at places that serve vegetables,
salads, etc but often the vegetables are prepared in tons of butter and
salt.

Beverly

I've owned and operated restaurants of all sorts for 30 years. Even
the ones that cooked according to formulas didn't always turn out the
same thing every time. Chain operations have to adapt recipes to local
tastes. Seasonal variations cause different formulations. Tomatoes
don't come all the same.

Having said all that, there are clearly dishes that will lend
themselves to nutritional analyses. Foods prepared from convenience
mixes or ingredients that the restaurants simply assemble. Fast food.

"More or less the same" will still contribute to significant
differences in nutritional profiles. In the south, sugar will often be
added to vegetables. Not so in the north. Same with fats and
condiments. Even the big chain operations use some eyeballing and
judgement in the kitchens.

But any restaurant that prepares foods with any discretion in the
hands of the cooks or on a variable menu just can't do it. Same with
portion sizes - food doesn't often come in neat serving sizes and the
variability is significant. A scoop of mashed potatoes at the
beginning of the shift is usually smaller than the one at the end. As
staff gets tired, they're less critical.

Daily specials that are made with odds and ends or leftovers (soups,
omelets and quiches, stews, casseroles, etc.) will be impossible to
evaluate on a daily basis. Even well-established dishes demand
compensation in the kitchen if prepared form raw ingredients.

If I had to have analyses of every dish on my normal menus, the cost
would be very ugly. I got a price of $750 for each flavor of fruit
juice curd I make for sale to be analyzed. They are made by an utterly
inflexible recipe because they're packaged products. My normal menus
used to contain around 50 food items ranging through the normal
categories and were deeply changed quarterly. No specials. No
variations. No soups, desserts, breads, compound butters listed.
That's $37,500 each quarter to have the analyses done. Nice even
$150,000 per year and that doesn't cover everything. Will some things
be exempt for this labeling? If not, either no specials or no truth.

How does this nutrition labeling apply to the bar and mixed drinks?
How about banquets where customers want foods prepared to their
specifications? And buffets where portion sizes are so variable even
if they don't make changes in the recipe for their group? Recipes
can't be scaled exactly, so a formulation for 25 isn't simply
multiplied by 10 to feed 250.

Foodservice operators have wrestled with this question for years.
Hired consultants and experts. Formed committees with outside people.
Nobody has come up with a rational way to do it or an irrational one.
The only way anyone could do this is if all the food were processed
and packaged. Factory-food. Not interested.

How accurate would the threshold need to be? Would a range be useful?
 If it required restaurants to list all ingredients, that might be an
issue. Proprietary recipes. What would you like to see on the menus?
Which nutrients?

Pastorio