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Expert's role in food fight has sour outcome
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The ethics flap over whether New York City's chain restaurants should be required to include calorie content on their menus or menu boards is headed for a legal showdown.
This pro-consumer disclosure is scheduled to start March 31 for New York City eateries affiliated with chains that have 15 or more units nationwide, but the New York State Restaurant Association has filed suit in federal court asking that the rule be declared unconstitutional.
The controversy warmed when it was revealed that the president-elect of the Obesity Society, described by the New York Times as a leading group of obesity doctors and scientists, filed a court document on behalf of the restaurant association.
Dr. David Allison, who was in line to become the society's president later this year, accepted money from the restaurant association to draft the legal filing. The Times said Allison also has had advisory roles with, and received compensation from, manufacturers including Coca-Cola and Frito-Lay, neither best known for their nutritionally worthwhile products.
Allison's contention: The new rules will tempt patrons to watch their intake at restaurants but end up still hungry and gorge themselves when they get home. Or maybe stop at McDonald's for a 540-calorie Big Mac.
A disputing physician, Dr. Barry Popkin, director of the Interdisciplinary Obesity Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said many of the society's 1,500 members were "completely mad" over Allison's position. Popkin filed his own affidavit backing the city's regulation, and after Allison's role became public the Obesity Society officially backed the city rule.
Citing the controversy over his affidavit, Allison resigned on Feb. 29 as president-elect of the society.
"While I stand behind the scientific statements I made, my right to make them, and the manner in which I made them, I realize now that participating in this case while in the presidential sequence [of the society] was a serious political error," Allison wrote.
All of this raises the question: How would the public react if food manufacturers decided to no longer reveal calorie and ingredient content on their packaging? You would hope that the Food and Drug Administration would enforce its regulations and lower the boom on them.
The New York City restaurants will argue that Americans should have the freedom to eat what they want without being advised of the possible danger.
Shame on them.
Nationally, except for Seattle, where a similar regulation is to go into effect Aug. 1, the disclosure movement has been blocked or slowed by the restaurant industry. California's Legislature approved a statewide requirement last year, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill.
Lou Gelfand • lgelfand@startribune.com
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