The impact of Obamacare is so vast it has restaurants wondering if they may be forced to stop selling locally made “craft beers” and other alcoholic beverages made by small entrepreneurs.
A group of trade associations recently wrote the Food and Drug Administration expressing concern regarding a new federal labeling guide for restaurants and urging that the agency be flexible.
The trade groups’ concerns relate to a provision intended to fight obesity requiring all “restaurants, retail food establishments and vending machines” to list the calories for all foods they provide. A guidance released in September by the FDA listed only one exception for alcoholic beverages: bottles that are on display behind a bar and used by bartenders. Otherwise, alcoholic beverages’ calorie content must be listed according to the data in the FDA’s nutrition database.
That’s a problem, the trade associations pointed out to the FDA. “The data requested by the FDA for its menu labeling rules are not available today for many beers, wines, cordials, liqueurs and flavored spirits featured on the menus of covered establishments. Until such information is readily available, beverage alcohol industry members may be required to incur the costs of laboratory testing that could amount to $1,000 per brand.”
The letter was signed by the heads of the Brewers Association, the Wine Institute, the National Association of Beverage Importers and the Distilled Spirits Council, among others.
The rule, which does not take effect until December 2016, directly applies only to restaurants and related establishments. Breweries or wineries would not be obligated to calculate the calories of their products. But the pressure on them to do so would be high since not calculating it could result in restaurants refusing to carry their products.
“Large or regional craft brewers may have to scale to bear the costs of testing, but for many small, local brewers this may create significant hardships if they choose to stay in chain restaurants,” said Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association.
FDA spokeswoman Jennifer Dooren told the Washington Examiner the concerns were misplaced. The FDA allows establishments to use calorie ranges for items when more specific information is not readily available.
“An example of the range would be if white wine is listed on a menu — there could be a range of calories because there would be several wine types,” Doren said. “The same might apply to beer listings on a menu.”
The FDA’s nutritional charts include listings for broad categories such as “Alcoholic beverage, beer, regular” and “Alcoholic beverages, beer, higher alcohol” but the number of categories is limited. It is not clear what a restaurant would or could do for any exotic or unusual beverage whose ingredients do not fall into an obvious category. Restaurants also run the risk of violating the law if the FDA decides the calorie range the establishment estimated was wrong.
Joan McGlockton, vice president of food policy for the National Restaurant Association, said the pressure would be on the brewers, wineries and distillers to provide more information about their products.
“As long as there is documentation of how the nutrition information is determined, then it can be calculated through cookbooks, the USDA database, or other reasonable means, not necessarily laboratory analysis. On our end, we think that this documentation will be key, so we would recommend that craft brewers have this information to provide to the restaurateurs as the cost of testing for a covered establishment — in this case a restaurant — would be expensive,” McGlockton said.
Conservative groups slammed the Obama administration, saying it should not be micromanaging restaurants’ menus. “The calorie labeling regulation is just another example of the excessive and wasteful burdens put forth by Obamacare under the guise of protecting our health,” said John Kartch, spokesman for Americans for Tax Reform.
A study by Arizona State University published in February found that while 60 percent of people read the calorie menu labels at chain restaurants only 16 percent use the information when they make their order.
A New York University School of Medicine study of New York City restaurants, which have had to post calorie counts for six years, found no statistically significant reduction over time in the calorie or nutrition content of the foods customers purchased, nor did consumers visit the restaurants less. The study was published in Health Affairs at the beginning of the month.
