In an effort to promote better health and more informed eating habits, California is now requiring restaurant chains with 20 or more locations to provide calorie counts and expanded nutritional information for customers.
In Santa Barbara County, the county Public Health Department’s Environmental Health Services is overseeing the implementation of the new regulations, which went into effect last week.
Restaurants’ menus and menu boards must include calorie content next to corresponding menu items, and establishments must be able to provide expanded nutritional information for their menus upon request.
The Environmental Health Services Department will spend the first three to six months of the regulations educating businesses as they come into compliance.
“We believe menu labeling is an important step forward to help consumers make informed decisions about the foods they eat,” county health officer Dr. Charity Dean said in a statement.
“Good nutrition is the very basis of good health. We commend local restaurants for their efforts to add nutritional information to food menus.”
In addition to big-name restaurant chains like The Habit and Olive Garden, other types of food-serving establishments like Starbucks are included in the new regulations, said EHS director Larry Fay.
Though the EHS doesn’t have a definitive list yet of every chain affected by the requirements, Fay said that there likely aren’t any with 20 or more locations contained only to Santa Barbara County, or even to the Tri-County area.
Many, he added, already provide some sort of nutritional and calorie information to customers.
In May, the Public Health Department will also be overseeing the implementation of federal menu-labeling regulations that California’s requirements were modeled after.
Established under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the federal regulations include food-serving establishments like cafeterias, grocery stores selling take-away food and concession stands at entertainment venues.
California originally passed menu-labeling and nutritional rules for restaurants in 2008, but repealed the law three years later to realign its regulations with the Affordable Care Act.
— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.