When Rep. Nancy Pelosi infamously declared that we have to pass ObamaCare in order to find out what’s in it, she wasn’t kidding. Buried in the mammoth 2700-page law that most in Congress did not bother to read before passing is Section 4205. That section requires any pizzeria, grocery store, or convenience store with more than 20 locations to post calorie information in their stores on menu boards. The way the law is written, it requires the national pizza chains to post fixed information on a whole lot of varieties of pizza. Pizza shops and chains with fewer than 20 outlets would be exempted.
“There are 34 million ways to make a pizza, we’ve done the math,” American Pizza Community spokeswoman Jenny Fouracre-Petko told me in an interview. “There just is no way to put that on a menu board.”
She added that menu boards would help virtually no customers at, say, Domino’s Pizza make any kind of informed nutritional decision. “Normally, with carry out restaurants, you’re not standing in front a menu board. You’re ordering over the phone, or online, so an online solution is a much more technologically savvy way to provide the information than an extensive menu board that no one sees. Also, the information on a menu board may not be accurate because of the way pizzas are made. The information may not be accurate if a 16-year-old kid decides to toss on an extra handful of cheese. We don’t want a class action lawsuit over something like that.”
Indeed. Speaking for myself, I haven’t stood inside a Domino’s or any other chain carry-out pizza place in at least a decade. Online ordering is the usual method. Online nutritional tools and information would seem the way to go. The fear of lawyers lawyering a handful of cheese or sausage is not unreasonable. In the ObamaCare future, the pizza industry might need its own version of tort reform to bring costs down, if Section 4205 is not stopped. But the FDA is not even disclosing when it will issue its final rule.
The American Pizza Community has tried working with the Food and Drug Administration to fix the expensive regulation, which is set to go into full effect at some point by the end of 2012. But the FDA has not been cooperative, and has not acted on the industry’s input. Fouracre-Petko says that the FDA is missing an opportunity to work with an industry that wants to provide information to consumers, just in a way that the consumers can actually use, and which will be easier for the agency to monitor for compliance.
“We really feel strongly that we want to provide nutrition information, and we know how to provide it to our customers in a way that makes sense,” she said. “It’s frustrating to see the FDA continue down the path of government overreach. There’s things about this law with the FDA that we know aren’t going to work out. For instance, checking thousands of stores all around the country. The online solution is going to be easier for compliance alone.” The FDA would need an army of compliance officers, similar to the 16,000 agents hired by the IRS to look after ObamaCare’s new mandate, just to check the menu boards in thousands of stores.
On what basis did this regulation even make it into the PPACA? It has nothing to do with patient care or with health insurance. No one’s cost for health insurance was going to be affected by whether or not they knew the caloric content of a piece of pizza. Who made it part of the law and what lobbyist paid for it?
Blaming the cost of health insurance/health care on “fat people” is pretty popular these days. Apparently thin people never get cancer or have accidents or develop hypertension, etc etc.
A lot of DC staffers (and law clerks) are in the 20 to 25 range, you have to wonder why they wrote a rule that would close delivery of food to their offices near the capitol. Clearly having a HS or College degree doesn’t mean you can think. Perhaps we should force everyone to learn a game like chess where you have to ‘look down the road’ – note I suck at chess, but get the principle.
Exactly. All kinds of unrelated stuff went in there because they knew it wouldn’t be read and that it would be passed.
Looks to me like something Mayor Bloomzwerg cooked up …… Sort of to grow lean government? (LOL)
That’s the one thing these punks know something about — getting their hands on other people’s money! (NoLOL) “For your own good!”
Who do those pizza industry guys think they are!!!
obama has spoken. Their job is to comply or else they will suffer the consequences.
Obama’s answer to every thing is punish business, raise taxes and higher more government employees with full pensions and benefits. If he has to hire 100,000 pizza inspectors, that;s fine with him because business is evil. Remember “You didn’t build that”.
And then the MSNBC headline will be “ObamaCare creates 100,000 new jobs”
Next we will hear that section 4592 require that pedals be installed in cars, like those in paddle boats so we can get excercise when we are stuck in traffic.
Section 5203 probably requires all meats to not be cooked over hot flames or coals, but be microwaved or boiled to eliminate charcoal from intake.
Sextion 5204 requires all meats to be prepared medium well or well done to prevent contact with insufficiently cooked. Section 5205 does not allow sushi unless cooked medium well also.
Section 6112 will require all school lunches to have mandetory spinach or brussel sprouts, no dessert unless the green veggie is consumed (or hidden in your backpack)>
“Common sense in the regulations” — isn’t that a contradiction in terms these days?
My thought exactly. They’re in for a long wait if they want common sense from Washington.
Yessirree! When I think nutrition, I think PIZZA! AND I have to know the exact amount of salt, fat and calories etc. so I can make an informed decision on whether to eat that fifth slice or not.
Personally, I don’t bother counting slices! The whole thing or none! Garfield is my hero — a cat who knew what’s good for him — “I’m not overweight, I’m just undertall. My, that lasagna smells scrumptious! Gimme another one!”
Although I know better, I’m beginning to find myself praying for a real revolution, you know, Guillotine and all …. Shorten those dickheads by one. Do ‘em good!
Calories? Nutritional stats? Who cares! A good Pizza is just a gustatory pleasure, a vacation from ordinary meals. And, yes, there are a million ways to make pizza.
We enjoy pizza now and then at home, but never get it from the chain shops. Sorry, Domino’s, Papa John’s and the rest, where we live there a plenty of small independent pizzeria’s, many owned and operated by Italian immigrants who make the best pizza’s anywhere.
I’m usually a two-slice guy, enjoy an antipast with it…and don’t worry what about a government dietician’s* opinion.
*Dietician: A person trained in the pseudoscience of nutrition who makes sure food is bland, tasteless and unappealing. If you doubt that, visit a hospital or nursing home and see all the meal trays returned untouched…
Not sure how Roberts could have ruled this constitutional. This is in no way a tax or regulation of interstate commerce. It is not pertinent to the goal of providing healthcare. The food industry does not want to fight this battle and I don’t blame them but this seems like a protection racket where Congress will take payoffs to keep costs down for private business. Where are the proscribed limits on government? Seems there aren’t any.
“Pizza shops and chains with fewer than 20 outlets would be exempted.”
Well, why not just have a “chain” of fewer than 20 restaurants and then start a new corporation with a slightly different name for the next 20 restaurants? So you could have Pappa John’s Pizza I for the first 20 shops, then Pappa John’s Pizza II for the next 20 shops, and so on. And, with the Obamacare rules kicking in, all the workers will probably be part-time workers so the shop owners will not have to pay for insurance. That should make the workers even more happy, thanks to Obamacare. I wonder if the people who voted for Obama will be happy once they’re either unemployed or forced into a part-time job? Maybe they will be. With 99 weeks of unemployment and all sorts of government subsidies, maybe the people who work in these pizza shops are better off being unemployed? It must be great having a sugar daddy in the White House.
I think you have hit upon the Achilles heel of this regulation. How many of those national chains function as franchises? If a franchisee only operates 5-8 Papa John’s stores, e.g., would the regulation apply? This is going to get tied up in the courts for a while.
I know how small chains and local pizzarias can save a lot of dough(!)complying with this stupid regulation. For the big boys like Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, Dominoes, etc. the cost of compliance is a pittance in their overall budgets. Small players should take advantage of Big Pizza’s investment and simply copy their nutrition info. It may take some creativity to write up the nutritional info on a specialty goat cheese and Sicilian prosciutto pizza but it can be done.
To hell with Obamacare and to hell with the overweening bureaucratic state.
Is it actually possible to determine nutrition information for a pizza? If I order a sausage pizza, I expect the guy to dip his hand in a more or less random way into a pile of sausage and spread it on. I don’t expect him to carefully weigh each portion to make sure a precise amount of calories is metered out. So I expect each pizza to be an original creation, not a totally reproducible, machine-made production. Frankly, I don’t want a pizza made in the latter way.
I think it’s insane to put something like this in Obamacare. It should be its own rule. I doubt Congress would ever get enough votes to pass it as a single item.
D
In almost any Business Management course you’ll come across an example of a pizza franchise, usually one of the ones who just banded together last May to create this American Pizza group.
Regardless of which chain you’re studying, they all detail at great length the training guidelines, techniques and technologies they employ to create that same pizza over and over again with as little deviation as possible. On top of that owners source their ingredients through the franchise.
So they spend millions of dollars ensuring that their product is virtually the same everywhere in the country, but throw up their hands when asked to estimate what’s in their products.
They’re just playing games here.
I think the problem is that federal bureaucrats only use the internet for surfing porn sites and sending saucy emails to paramours, and that only during business hours. If the pizza industry could convince these government workers that the internet is in fact a legitimate source of information and commerce, things might go better for them.
We were in CA over Labor Day weekend, and I couldn’t believe that all of the fast food places had calorie numbers for everything up on the board. I had never seen it before, but now I see our local Mickey D’s in GA has the same thing posted. They post a calorie range for something that has some variance, like french fries (they don’t count each one out, at least yet!)or soft drinks.
When the government has a vested interest in controlling health costs, then they’ll be very interested in what you’re ingesting.
Remember the opening scene in the Island? “No bacon for you.”
Changing the sun, the moon, and the stars might be an easier chore than getting common sense into regulations.
Also, calorie counts are utter nonsense. Forcing restaurants to post irrelevant “nutrition” information is worthless and expensive. Ingredients and composition actually mean something. Calorie count does not (not all “calories” are created equal).
Papa John CEO John Schnatter “has warned that ObamaCare will hurt his industry.” And he’s doing commercials with quarterback Peyton Manning touting that he’ll give away 2 million free pizzas during the NFL season. Guess ObamaCare isn’t hurting him all that bad.
You really don’t know the first thing about business or advertising, do you?
I’ve been in business and have considerable experience in marketing. My point is that Mr. Schnatter complains about government regulations putting him out of business, but then gives away $30 million in promotional items (assuming average cost of $15 per pie). In short, he ain’t hurting as bad as he claims.
Ever hear of tax write-offs?
Besides that, it’s not just him that’s complaining. The entire pizza industry is fighting an idiotic regulation. Read the article.
so, let me see…if he “ain’t hurting”, in your opinion, the regs aren’t harmful?
i question your business experience and your “considerable experience in marketing.”
SteveB, put down the bong. Who’s giving away the pizzas? Him? His company? The franchisees? How is the cost being covered? How are they/he spreading the cost over time?
You haven’t asked question one, you just connected two unrelated factoids in your sub-optimal mind and came out with an uninformed opinion – IOW, you behaved as a typical lefty.
How long did it take the businesses you worked for to go under?
Typical lefty?? Funny. I read the article and seems like a solution is possible.
Too bad Barry Goldwater is no longer around. The country needs a Goldwater clone to take some of you namby-pamby, whining, hand-wringing, sore loser far-righties and slap ya’ll upside the head. He was a real conservative and you could learn some real lessons from him & his career.
Happy Thanksgiving.
This entire post was about the problem and the proposed solution. Yet you singled out Schlatter, despite the fact that he is far from the dominant figure in the story, for ignorant condemnation of the type that leftists have been slinging at him lately. No one else has a problem with his ads or his promotions, because they get what he is trying to do — make his business successful.
So typical leftist is accurate, if you’re going to do what the typical leftist does.
Ha ha ha – you voted this rat stinking government in.. now live with it. When does American grow balls and tell the feds to drop dead??? When ?
This is why legislatures should be part time, and legislators should have to hold a real job in their districts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx9i9TDiYdA
this is hilarious and sad, and you have probably seen it but is worth another 2 minutes to think on it again
“F’K Em… fire them now or later.
I have gone Galt and found $10,000 a year I put into the “economy” for eatin’ out.
I now have better purpose for those funds. I can bake a far better pie than served in any pizza joint.
Let the parasites in obama precincts pay now. Cut off all revenue to them.
I think we are seeing the beginning of a trend. It seems that more companies are going to put as many workers on part time status as they can. There will be a core of full time people, but not having to provide insurance for the masses will certainly cut down the cost of doing business. Additionally, the obamabots shouldn’t complain about this development. After all, if a business needs x hours of labor in a week and the less-than-30-hours per week workers can’t provide that effort, then obviously more jobs are being created.
That must explain why Ian’s Pizza, which has four locations in Wisconsin, and has offered full heath care coverage to its 50 full-time employees for years now, is still in business.
Common sense in D.C.? Good luck finding any of that.
lot of the area convenience stores have sandwiches/pizzas and are owned by local company with more than 20 locations.
wonder how thats going to hurt them.
since nobody delivers out here they are the only way I can get hot pizza thats fresh.
bwahahaha
brats!
and yet you righties are the best entertainment on the net. when i need a howl i can always count on you !
can’t they just print the nutrition info for a slice of cheese pizza on the top of the box?
with a http://www.address for the info on extra toppings per slice?
jezzzus on crutch.
Is every one on both sides soo stupid?
Incredibly, back when there was no nutrititional information provided on packaged or prepared foods, Americans were all a lot slimmer.
The truth is that there ISN’T a “good solution” to this problem. Government shouldn’t be imposing this regulation at all. Period. That, and only that, is the right answer. There is no point in even discussing anything else, because everything else is the wrong answer.