Are there legal barriers to requiring restaurants to provide nutrition information? Does the First Amendment protect restaurants from such laws?
The federal, state and local governments have the legal authority to legislate and regulate in the interest of public health. This includes the ability to require restaurants to provide nutrition information for the products they sell. This can be done on a federal level by Congress amending the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 to include a requirement that restaurants must disclose the nutritional content of their foods and beverages, like manufacturers of processed foods already are required to do. This can also be done at a state and local level by enacting menu labeling laws. Disclosure requirements are routine in the current commercial marketplace. Just think of all the labels on food packaging (which require standard nutrition information of processed foods), clothing items (which require information on the country of origin and the fiber content), and on alcoholic beverage containers (which must state the percentage of alcohol by volume). There is no First Amendment
