More Menu Revisions

Confusion continues to reign over Judge Holwell's decision to throw out the city's calorie regulation. No one seems sure, and the press reports are similarly unclear, whether the city can proceed to rewrite its rule in a way that limits its application to the smaller percentage of chain stores. Here's today's NY Daily News take:
"A Manhattan federal judge handed the city a supersized setback yesterday when he junked a rule forcing fast-food restaurants to post calorie contents on menus.
Judge Richard Holwell found the regulation violates federal law, which says eateries don't have to list calorie counts on the menu if they voluntarily post them someplace else - like the Internet. A Manhattan federal judge handed the city a supersized setback yesterday when he junked a rule forcing fast-food restaurants to post calorie contents on menus.
Judge Richard Holwell found the regulation violates federal law, which says eateries don't have to list calorie counts on the menu if they voluntarily post them someplace else - like the Internet."

Advocates of the measure feel that the city can proceed but it's clear that anything that it does would be subject to another legal challenge, a challenge whose results are uncertain. At this time, as the NY Times reports, "It was unclear whether the city would try to adopt a regulation that might satisfy the judge." The tricky issue here is that the judge felt that the city couldn't punish only those restaurants that voluntarily posted calorie information; The city, he ruled, could have required all restaurants or all chain restaurants to post the caloric contents of their dishes, but was not allowed to regulate how those that chose to do so voluntarily went about it because of the existing federal law.

So can the city make calorie posting mandatory for only chain stores? We can't say for sure. This should, however, be a signal for the DOH to sit down with the industry and craft a compromise. Given the animus down at Worth Street to fast food we don't think that this will happen,