State Senator Jonathan A. Harris (D-West Hartford), the Senate Chairman of the Public Health Committee, said that he is disappointed by Governor M. Jodi Rell’s veto of pro-consumer, pro-health menu labeling legislation, and that he is surprised by the flawed explanations she offered for her veto.
Sen. Harris was one of the major proponents of Senate Bill 1080, An Act Concerning Access to Health and Nutritional Information in Restaurants, colloquially known as the ‘menu labeling’ bill. The bill would have required, by July 1, 2010, that each chain restaurant in Connecticut with 15 or more national locations to make available to consumers the total number of calories for each standard menu item as that item is usually prepared and offered for sale by the restaurant.
Passage of the law would have helped address some shocking new statistics unveiled this week by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: 60 percent of Connecticut adults and 25 percent of youths ages 10 to 17 are overweight or obese. The cost of treated obesity-related diseases in America was $75 billion in 2003 alone, and 20 percent of America’s health care costs over the past two decades are attributable to treating obesity-related diseases.
“I agree with the governor that personal responsibility plays a role in healthy eating choices,” Sen. Harris said. “But the key to personal responsibility is to have the information you need to make the right decisions. The bill that she vetoed today would have provided that information.”
Sen. Harris criticized the governor for simplistically noting in her veto message that “common sense” dictates that “a vegetable salad is healthier and more nutritious than a bacon cheeseburger,” and so there is no need for legislation that would identify the total calorie counts in each meal.
“The governor repeats this false argument despite recent and well-documented research which shows that fast-food consumers and even professional dieticians consistently underestimate the number of calories in various fast-food menu items,” he said. “Rarely is the consumer’s choice as clear as a salad versus a bacon cheeseburger. More likely it’s between a donut and a muffin, or fried chicken and barbecued ribs, and then the answer to the question ‘what’s healthiest?’ is not so obvious. For instance, the Southwestern Cobb salad at Chili’s has 1,080 calories, while the half-rack of honey barbecue ribs only has 600 calories. Many people think just because it’s a ‘salad’ that it’s healthier, but that’s not true.”
Sen. Harris also dismissed the governor’s arguments that the bill would have burdened local fast-food outlets, or been unenforceable.
“When drafting this bill we worked very closely with national fast food chains and The Restaurant Association to put businesses’ suggestions into the bill and model Connecticut’s menu labeling law on existing laws in other states in order to minimize, if not outright eliminate, any costs to local businesses. These national chains have already counted the calories in their meals, and because menu labeling is already in effect in New York City and California, these companies have already been printing updated menus. So there’s no cost there. That’s why this bill had bipartisan Republican and Democratic support in the Senate,” he said. “And for the governor to criticize this bill because we asked the Public Health Department to enforce its provisions within existing budgetary appropriations is confounding, since Governor Rell herself has repeatedly demanded that state government must do more with less.”
Sen. Harris said while it is possible that federal menu labeling legislation may be enacted at some point in the future, “who knows if and when that federal legislation will pass, and in the meantime, how many lives right here in Connecticut would have been improved with the passage of our own menu labeling bill?”
Categories: Jonathan Harris
