Restaurants get nudge to provide nutrition information

Health officials have launched a small-scale effort to encourage restaurants in Washoe County to begin posting nutritional information about their offerings.

Buenos Grill in Reno, Pathways Cafe on the University of Nevada, Reno, campus and Black Rock Pizza in Sparks are the pioneering restaurants that have worked with the Washoe County District Health Department to develop nutritional labels.

Kelli Seals, a health educator with the department, says about a dozen locally owned restaurants have been contacted. Initial efforts targeted independently owned restaurants that have marketed themselves as health-conscious.

The federal Affordable Care Act will require larger restaurant chains those with 20 or locations to provide nutritional information similar to the labels found on items in grocery stores. The federal government hasn't yet established a date when that rule will become effective.

Seals says that some independently owned restaurants in the Washoe County may feel competitive pressures to list nutritional information once chain restaurants begin doing so.

And Washoe County health officials are encouraging small operators to move quickly to take advantage of their offer of a free analysis of their menu offerings.

The process is fairly simple: A dietitian working under contract with the health department enters a recipe into a software program. The software determines calories, calories from fat, sodium content and other nutritional information.

To save the cost of reprinting menus, health officials expect that most restaurants will follow the path of Buenos Grill, which has prepared a separate sheet that shows the nutrition label for each item on its menu.

Seals says a stumbling block for some restaurants is the lack of printed recipes because cooks and chefs prepare dishes by experience and instinct.

Some restaurant owners, meanwhile, are reluctant to allow outsiders to see their recipes, considering them to be irreplaceable trade secrets.

And some, Seals acknowledges, are spooked that their customers may recoil when they see the nutritional data for their favorite dishes.

But some restaurants in other markets have responded to worries about nutritional value by changing some ingredients using plain yogurt to replace sour cream, for instance.

A researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, one of the first cities to mandate nutritional labels on menus, found that labels led restaurant customers to order lower-calorie alternatives.

The research found that parents ordering food for children were especially aware of calorie counts when nutrition labels were provided.