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Support Menu Labeling
Please urge your Governor to support regulations requiring fast-food and other chain restaurants to list calories, saturated plus trans fat, carbohydrates, and sodium on printed menus, and calories on menu boards (where space is limited).
Without clear, easy-to-use nutrition information, it’s difficult to make informed choices at chain restaurants. Otherwise how can you know that a tuna fish salad sandwich has 50% more calories than a roast beef sandwich? Or that a small chocolate milkshake at McDonald’s has more calories than a Big Mac?
| Sample Letter for Campaign |
Subject: Please support menu labeling regulations
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
As your constituent, I urge you to establish regulations to require fast-food and other chain restaurants with 10 or more units to list calories, saturated plus trans fat, carbohydrates, and sodium on printed menus, and calories on menu boards (where space is limited).
Although Americans eat out more than ever before, few restaurants provide nutrition information. As a result, we often are getting more calories, fat, and salt than we realize. This can be particularly problematic for people who watch what they eat to manage health conditions such as diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure.
Restaurant labeling regulations would give Americans an important new tool to help them eat well and maintain a healthy weight. It would provide information that would allow people to take responsibility for their own health and make more informed decisions for a significant and growing part of their diet.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
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Campaign Launched:
March 08, 2006
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Supporting Americans’ efforts to eat healthfully is important because unhealthy diets are among the leading causes of death, disability, and high health-care costs in the nation. Poor diets contribute to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in the United States each year from heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and other diseases.
American adults and children eat a third of their calories at restaurants and other food-service establishments, twice as much as 20 years ago. Studies show that when people eat out, they consume more calories and saturated fat and fewer nutrients than when they eat at home.
Three-quarters of adults report using nutrition labels on food packages, and almost half say that the labels have caused them to change their minds about which food product to purchase. Yet over half of large chain restaurants do not provide any nutrition information to their customers. When information is available, it is usually from websites (requiring a computer and logging onto the internet before going out) or pamphlets that can be hard to find or difficult to read. We do not expect people to make sound choices in supermarkets without nutrition information and we should not expect them to be able to do so in restaurants.
Two-thirds of Americans support requiring restaurants to list nutrition information, such as calories, on menus, according to four nationally representative polls.
For additional background please see CSPI’s report “Anyone’s Guess: The Need for Nutrition Labeling at Fast-Food and Other chain Restaurants”, available on our website at http://www.cspinet.org/restaurantreport.pdf.
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