FSA mulling nutritional requirements for restaurants
which would require restaurants and hotels to provide nutritional
information on their food menus - and it is hoping to introduce the
same measures across Europe.
The UK's Food Standards Agency is said to be considering making it a requirement for all restaurants and hotels to show the calorie content and fat content of the food they sell.
According to a report in the Independent newspaper, the agency is in favour of the move which it believes would improve the nutritional intake of British consumers. The report said the agency was already drawing up plans, which it hoped would also be adopted by the EFSA and introduced across Europe.
Such a move is likely to meet with fierce resistance, of course, from the restaurant and hotel sector, not only in the UK but across the whole of Europe. The requirements would be expensive to implement - for example, they would mean every menu would have to be reprinted, something which many European companies have already had to do once in the last year as a result of the changeover to the euro - but nutritionists argue that improving consumer health would more than offset the inconvenience.
The Independent report cites a spokeswoman from the FSA who said that the idea had been mooted as one possible way of combating the rise in the level of obesity in the UK, and the subsequent stress that this puts on the already strained National Health Service.
The proposal will also be put to the EU Labelling Review Steering Group and the FSA will push for Europe-wide regulations to introduce the new labelling requirements, according to the report.
While the proposed regulations are currently just that - a proposal - the FSA has made clear its intention to do whatever it feels is necessary to improve the health of the nation, or at the very least to give consumers the necessary information to make their own informed decisions.
How workable the proposals will be in practice is yet to be seen, of course - depending on the level of information they could require companies to include, menus could end up the size of road maps and be just as difficult to decipher - and if restaurants in the UK are likely to be oppose the proposals, then those on the Continent are likely to be even more appalled by the proposal - it is certainly hard to imagine that the gastronomic treat which is eating out at a restaurant in France would be enhanced by nutritional content labeling on the menu.
So is this really a step in the right direction, or just another example of the nanny state to be opposed at all costs?
