McDonald's postpones plan for nutritional labelling
McDonald's delays food labels
Fast-food industry resisting mounting public pressure to put information about food contents on packaging
Sep. 18, 2006, DANA FLAVELLE, BUSINESS REPORTER, THE TORONTO STAR
McDonald's of Canada Ltd. says it has postponed plans to begin voluntarily disclosing on its packaging the amount of fat, protein, carbohydrates and salt in its food.
The company said it is waiting until it has finished making improvements in some of its menu items, citing the difficulty of finding a substitute for the trans-fat heavy oils used to cook its french fries, as an example.
"We've been working to improve the components in our menu," said spokesperson Ron Christianson. "We've made the decision to delay the packaging information until those updates have been made."
The revelation comes amid renewed pressure on all Canadian fast-food chains and food processors to provide more information to consumers on the nutritional content of their products.
The House of Commons was expected to debate today a private member's bill proposed by Scarborough Southwest MP Tom Wappel that calls for tougher food labelling laws.
"The purpose of my bill is to provide information to Canadians that they can use to make healthy food choices," Wappel, a Liberal, told the House when he first introduced the bill two years ago.
McDonald's said it provides nutrition information now on its website, as do most other major fast-food chains in Canada. The company has also added more salads and other healthy choices to its menu in recent years.
But critics say websites do little to help consumers make the right decision at the point of purchase.
"Diet related disease is a big problem. Health care costs are a big problem. Providing diet-related information on menus is a really efficient way of reducing disease and reducing health care costs," said Bill Jeffery, national co-ordinator for the Centre for Science in the Public Interest, an Ottawa-based advocacy organization.
Wappel's bill would require:
# Large restaurant chains to post the number of calories, saturated and trans fats and sodium on their menus.
# Fresh meat, poultry and fish packages to disclose certain nutrition facts, such as fat and calorie levels.
# Food processors already covered by existing laws to go a step further by showing the percentage by weight of key ingredients. They would have to state, for example in fruit punch, what percentage of the drink in the container is real fruit, versus water and sugar.
The restaurant industry is fighting the bill, saying it would add a level of cost and complexity that few operators could manage. "The bill is unworkable and does not reflect what our members are hearing from their customers," said Jill Holroyd, communications and research director for the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservice Association. Restaurants aren't like factories that turn out identical items, she said, and customers often want their meal customized. To expect them to provide nutrition information on every single item is unrealistic.
Some 26 major restaurant chains, representing 40 per cent of the $50-billion-a-year fast food industry, have already agreed to voluntarily add a line on their menu that says nutrition information is available upon request, she noted.
But Jeffery suspects there's another agenda.
"The companies probably harbour this fear that if people realized there are 1,000 calories in a large milkshake they won't buy as many of them," he said.
Canada has among the most progressive food labelling laws in the world, said Wayne Roberts, co-ordinator of the Toronto Food Policy Council, a think tank within the City of Toronto's public health department.
Roberts is referring to Health Canada's decision two years ago to create a mandatory, uniform nutrition label for most packaged foods sold in grocery stores. The law came into effect last January.
Called Nutrition Facts, the panel found on most common grocery stores items, from cereal to canned soup, tells consumers the amount of calories, fat, sodium and carbohydrates in different products.
But the law only solved part of the problem, Roberts said, because so many people buy prepared food on the run, whether it's a coffee and doughnut in the morning or a takeout pizza on the way home.
Nearly a third of all food dollars are spent on restaurant and takeout meals, Roberts said citing figures supplied by Statistics Canada. Yet, restaurant meals are exempt from current nutrition labelling laws.
For its part, the fast food industry says it's being unfairly blamed for a wider societal problem of inactivity and over-consumption.
Their surveys show consumers are eating just one in 10 meals outside the home.
As for McDonald's, the restaurant chain said it remains committed to adding nutrition labels to its packaging, but the introduction has been delayed until the second half of next year, Christianson said.
Much of the hold-up is related to McDonalds' ongoing efforts to find a "secure and sustainable" supply of trans-fat free cooking oil for its french fries, he said. The firm no longer cooks any of its chicken or fish in oil containing trans fats, he added.
McDonald's parent company announced last October it would begin adding nutrition labels to its packaging in several geographic regions, including Canada, starting in March 2006.
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