By: Muhammad Ikram Afif
The hustle bustle of the cities often lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. The unhealthy lifestyle itself can be caused by the consumption of the restaurant food especially fast food. Consumption of restaurant food has increased dramatically. This habit leads to the increase of obesity and other chronic diseases. Preventing obesity and other chronic diseases from unhealthy lifestyle is one of vital problems yet unseen as politically important. Therefore, taking steps to reduce those problems with menu-labeling could be helpful. The reason is because people tend to choose lower calories menu when the calories are stated in menu.
Requirements for labeling packaged foods and beverages are based on the principle that consumers have the right to know the nutrition content of these items to enable them to make choices better suited to their nutritional needs. Studies have shown that consumers routinely consult food labels (U.S.’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics 2001). The consequence of this is consumers will less likely to buy unhealthy food.
Forcing Power of State
The forcing powers of state plays vital role in this case. In United States, states and their political subdivisions confers upon them the ability to enact laws to protect the public’s health, safety, and welfare (Sligh v Kirkwood, 237 US 52, 59 (1915)). States and locales use this power to regulate the sale of products under the name of public health (Hutchinson Ice Cream Co et al. v Iowa 1919). Menu-labeling laws similarly require vendors to provide information about the nature of the products sold and are a valid exercise of the forcing power (Corn Products Refining Co v Eddy et al., 237 US 52, 59(1919).
Most proposed labeling laws require restaurants to post the nutritional information on menu boards or on the menus at the point of purchase so the information does not have to be requested or sought out in other ways (Wootan et al. 2006). It might be beneficial to simultaneously require restaurants to provide full nutritional information of staple products on one large board near the menu for consumers to consult If lawmakers choose to require only calories on menu boards (Pomeranz & Brownell 2008). Legal challenges can be minimized with one way: regulations must not prevent restaurants from including more information than is required by the mandate (Pomeranz & Brownell 2008).
Status Quo in Indonesia
Nowadays, there is only a few number of restaurants state the calories in the menu. The food information system in Indonesia is stipulated in Article 113-116 Law Number 18 Year 2012 about Food. Article 115 verse (5) explains that food information can be accessed easily and fast by citizens. In Article 82 PP Number 17 Year 1985 about Food and Nutrition Tenacity it is explained that the presentation and data distribution regarding food and nutrition information are done via:
a. Access regulation and data usage;
b. Periodic and or non-periodic publicity;
c. Publicity on website; and
d. Publicity on printed and electronic media.
As we can see, the regulation does not specify about the publicity in restaurants. In addition, there is no specific regulation regarding menu-labeling up until now.
To sum up, Menu-labeling is one of the effective ways to enhance people’s awareness about the importance of choosing food and the implementation of food and information system in Indonesia. Hopefully, menu-labeling laws can be regulated and implemented thoroughly because feeding the nation with the supervision of citizens’ health matters.