Statewide “Menu Labeling” Fails to Advance

A measure requiring all Tennessee restaurants to post the calorie count of their regular items failed Tuesday when it was deferred to a summer study committee.

State Health Commissioner Susan Cooper pleaded with a House subcommittee to keep the bill alive – and help Tennesseans lose weight. She gave this example of what would happen if just 10% of the state’s residents reduced 10% of their calorie intake from fast food restaurants.

“That would be over a million pounds in Tennessee that we would lose. In Davidson County alone it would 91,000 pounds. As you know that Tennessee leads the nation, in the top five states, as far as obesity and overweight. Certainly creeping up on about 64%.”

But Representative Vance Dennis, an attorney from Savannah, doubts that the additional menu information would help. He says it’s all common sense.

“You know fast food makes you fat. You don’t need, you don’t need a billboard saying that or a menu insert to tell you that. If you don’t know that, that insert’s not going to help you much, because you don’t have the capacity, I’m afraid.”

With three Republicans on the House Public Health Subcommittee ready to vote against the bill, the three Democrats on the committee quickly decided to defer it for a year rather than force a showdown.

Meanwhile a competing bill barring cities from requiring restaurants to print the calorie count on menus is ready for a vote on the Senate floor Wednesday.

WEB EXTRA

Here’s the bill that was deferred for study.

It is sponsored by Nashville Representative Mike Turner, chairman of the House Democratic caucus.

The competing bill is sponsored by Mount Juliet Republican Susan Lynn. This Republican sponsored bill is on the Senate floor calendar Thursday. In the House it goes before the House Health Committee next week.

Lynn’s bill would say that the state has never given the cities the right to require restaurants to disclosure nutritional information.

The two bills have become politically partisan with Republicans backing the fast food industry and Democrats arguing in favor of the “healthy menu” idea.