Monday, December 01, 2014

FDA Menu Labeling Law - Strangling the Free Market

More crushing regulations from the over reaching progressive socialist democrats. What more do we need to understand that the prevailing power structure in Washington is not about what is best for our country but what is best to cement a power structure in place that will bring control over others for decades to come.

From the FDA to the IRS to the FBI or the DOJ, every agency or Department in our present government is dictated to strangling freedom of the individual. You have to know we the people have become pawns, tools to be used and then abused.

FDA Menu Labeling Law Overreaches
Source: Daren Bakst, "FDA\'s Final Menu Labeling Rule: Going Way Beyond What\'s Required Under Obamacare," Daily Signal, November 25, 2014.

December 1, 2014

When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, it included a provision requiring restaurants to display nutritional information for their menu items. Specifically, the rule applied to "a restaurant or similar retail food establishment that is part of a chain with 20 or more locations."

The Food and Drug Administration proposed a regulation to implement the new requirement in 2011, but Daren Bakst of the Heritage Foundation contends the agency went far beyond what was required by the law. Instead of applying the nutrition mandate to traditional food establishments, the agency included grocery stores and convenience stores as well: as long as the stores sold prepared food, they would be required to include nutritional information for their products. This means, says Bakst, that a convenience store whose only prepared food offering is a hot dog would still be required to comply with the labeling requirements.

Now, the agency has released its final rule. Rather than scale back its 2011 proposal, the FDA has only increased the reach of the regulation: movie theaters and bowling alleys, among other locations, will now be required to comply with the menu requirements.

Do these menu laws even have an influence on nutrition and health? There is no clear, scientific indication that they do. In fact, when New York City imposed a law requiring food establishments to post nutrition information for consumers to see, a study from New York University and Yale University discovered that people actually consumed more calories, not less, after the labeling requirement was imposed.
 

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