NYC: Where the Menu Police Never Sleep

Posted by Baylen on Jan. 24, 2008

New York City is again attempting to unconstitutionally require some chain restaurants to post calorie information for all foods in GIANT TYPE alongside food listed on menus.

Chuck Hunt of the New York Restaurant Association summed up the new regulation, calling it “cumbersome” and noting “it really isn’t going to work.”

Self-important city health commissioner Dr. Thomas R. Frieden says chain restaurants — most of which already voluntarily provide such information on company websites an in smaller restaurant displays or handouts — deserve to be treated badly by the city because their “business model depends on keeping information from [their] consumers”. Right. Because the medical profession — doctors generally, government doctors even more so, and New York City public health doctors especially (recall this last group was responsible for imprisoning Mary Mallon on a city island without any sort of due process) — are known for their openness.

All this doesn’t mean New York is done ~~spiterzing~~ ~~fitzing~~ futzing with restaurant menus. Not one bit. As the NYT’s Jennifer 8 Lee (note: “8″, not “B.”) notes, the state is also set to crack down on evildoing New Yorkers who hand out menus, employing “pentalingual” sings that seem to show a brick with an arrow on it crushing a four-fingered humanesque hand.

This law would seem to raise many of the same First Amendment issues as does the calorie requirement regulation. But instead of fighting back in the courts, it might be best from a legal perspective for restaurants in New York to simply post no menus at all — at least until the city and state change these stupid laws. With no menus to display or hand out, they’d probably be exempt from the calorie requirements, and certainly not running afoul of the menu police.

Tagged: menus, new york city, stupid laws Share This