Health care bill: Calorie counts for Big Macs, vending machines

Democrats want you to know that your McDonald's Angus Burger meal has about 1,500 calories -- before you buy and burp.

Buried deep in the House health care bill is a provision, likely to raise nanny-state hackles, requiring fast-food chains and vending machine owners to notify customers of calorie counts -- by conspicuously posting nutritional information on menus or machines.

The provision -- Section 2572 -- requires retail food establishments "part of a chain with 20 or more locations" to list calorie counts "on the menu board including a drive-through board," as is currently required in New York City and other localities.

A "vending machine operator shall provide a sign in close proximity to each article of food or the selection button" that includes similar data.

Exemptions include items that will be on the menu for less than 60 days -- and limited test runs of food products.

It merges the language of Sen. Tom Carper's LEAN Act the MEAL Act, sponsored by Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), earlier this year.

Such labeling can have a significant impact on consumption habits. NYC's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene polled 10,000 customers to assess the impact of the city's menu labeling law, which went into effect in March 2008, and found that burger buyers ate about 106 fewer calories per purchase.

The idea is popular among progressives and public health types who think it could reduce obesity, hypertension and diabetes rates -- particularly among inner-city folks whose diets are disproportionately composed of cheap, tasty, calorie-loaded Big Macs, Whoppers and Chalupas.

But conservatives and libertarians see it as a major encroachment of the nanny state that has no place in a bill that's supposed to address affordability, insurance industry abuses and expanding coverage.

Radley Balko at Reason.com on the MEAL bill: "Supporters of menu labeling laws know that complying with these laws will be expensive and onerous. That's why they've only applied them to chain restaurants—restaurants they say can afford to send dishes off for nutritional testing. That makes the targets of menu labeling laws corporations, a more politically palatable target than the mom and pop diner."

In June, the National Restaurant Association threw its support behind the Harkin-DeLauro compromise.