We’ve all been there.
Think about those busy weeknights, after a long day at work and a stressful, bumper-to-bumper commute home. Or, perhaps, following Little League practice or a middle school theater rehearsal. It’s getting late, everyone’s tired, and you have neither the time nor energy to prepare a home-cooked meal.
You stop at your go-to chain restaurant off the highway and scan the menu with every intention of “eating healthy.” Perhaps you go with the chicken teriyaki bowl instead of the half-pound cheeseburger, or eschew that massive meatball sub in favor of one with turkey, swiss and mayo.
While your sense of discipline is commendable, and while the item you chose may be lower in calories than the decadent alternatives you bypassed, the truth is that you really don’t know how healthy that dinner really is. And, to paraphrase that old and shopworn phrase, what you don’t know could make you sick.
For about 20 years, chain restaurants in the State of Maryland have been required under law to publicly disclose, on their display menus, the caloric content of their menu items. And for good reason – this law has given Maryland consumers the information to make sensible choices if they are inclined to do so. It has also disabused us of many longstanding yet false assumptions about how many calories we are truly ingesting in a day:
Wait a minute. That salad has 1,300 calories?! But it’s a SALAD! With lettuce…and cheese…bacon bits…a few spoonfuls of blue cheese dressing…
What we still do not know, however, is how much sugar and salt is hidden in these very same menu options. And within that lack of knowledge lies a real public health problem within our society.
Nutritional research has found that 90 percent of U.S. adults consume too much daily sodium – and that 70 percent of that sodium comes from sodium that is added to restaurant food as a preservative, as a flavor additive or as a safeguard against bacteria. This pattern of consumption is a primary cause of heart disease and stroke – the leading causes of death in Maryland and across the United States.
At the same time, the average adult consumes 17 teaspoons of sugar per day – more than 2-3 times the recommended limits. To quote one of my favorite aunts back in the day, this doesn’t end up anywhere good. Excessive sugar intake is an obvious and principal catalyst of obesity, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.
None of this suggests that these items should be taken off the menus of your favorite chain restaurants. With everything going on in the world, we need our favorite comfort foods and desserts once in a while. And to be sure, a less-than-healthy meal can also be a reward for those of us who have, otherwise, adhered to our goals of exercising more and eating less.
Regardless of the circumstances, however, all of us benefit simply by knowing how much sugar and salt we are putting into our bodies on any given day. Fortunately, there is a bill before the Maryland General Assembly that would do just that.
The Maryland Informed Dining Act, sponsored in the House by Delegate Emily Shetty and in the Senate by Senator Alonzo Washington , would require chain restaurants to display a simple icon next to menu items that contain more than 50 percent of the recommended daily allowance for salt and more than 50 percent of the recommended daily allowance for added sugars.
As was the case with the aforementioned calorie disclosures, this bill imposes no mandates on the foods a restaurant may sell and that a consumer may eat. Nor does it impose a mandate on dining establishment that could ultimately be passed onto their customers. The chain restaurants covered under this bill – defined for these purposes as those with more than 20 locations in the State of Maryland – already have this information at their disposal.
This policy is a proven winner. New York City adopted this policy for sodium content in 2015, and a follow-up study last year found that it has resulted in declining hypertension rates, particularly among women and Black residents.
There is no reason to forestall this important legislation, and every reason to move forward. The costs to restaurants and their patrons are non-existent.
The benefits, however, are priceless – longer lives, healthier lives and better lives.
It is time for the Maryland General Assembly to give Marylanders the basic information we need to make healthy choices. It is time they pass the Maryland Informed Dining Act.
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