Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act of 2005

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY IN FOOD CONSUMPTION ACT OF 2005 -- (Extensions of Remarks - October 20, 2005)

The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 554) to prevent legislative and regulatory functions from being usurped by civil liability actions brought or continued against food manufacturers, marketers, distributors, advertisers, sellers, an trade associations for claims of injury relating to a person's weight gain, obesity, or any health condition associated with weight gain or obesity, with Mrs. MILLER of Michigan in the chair.

* Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Chairman, encouraging personal responsibility is something we all support in this institution--particularly with respect to rising rates of obesity. With two-thirds of premature deaths in the U.S. due to poor nutrition, physical inactivity and tobacco use, Americans do need to be more mindful of what they put in their bodies.

* But with only 12 percent of Americans eating a healthy diet and diabetes rates having risen 61 percent in the last decade alone, it is becoming increasingly clear that Congress is abdicating a responsibility of its own--we are failing to fashion policies that support Americans' efforts to adopt healthier lifestyles.

* Instead of shielding companies from litigation, we should be giving people the information they need to make the informed choices that exercise that personal responsibility. Today, Americans are eating out more frequently, spending about half of their food dollars at restaurants--a figure that has doubled since 1970. And everyone knows how much harder it is to eat healthily when they eat out. Little wonder children eat almost twice as many calories when they eat at a restaurant as they do when they eat at home--studies have shown that even trained nutritionists cannot estimate the calorie and fat content in a meal they do not prepare themselves.

* We need to be creative. For instance, I will be reintroducing legislation shortly, The Meal Education and Labeling Act, that would extend the kind of nutrition labeling you find on packaged foods at the store to include foods at fast food and other chain restaurants. It would require these chain restaurants to list calories, saturated plus trans fat and sodium on printed menus and calories on menu boards, giving consumers the necessary nutritional information to make healthy choices for themselves.

* That is the kind of balanced, innovative approach this body should be considering today to address obesity--that would be a real step toward helping encourage personal responsibility in food consumption while protecting industry and our Mom n' Pop restaurants. Instead, as we have seen countless times before, this majority has again chosen to use a very important public health issue to pursue a narrow and completely unrelated political agenda.

* Madam Chairman, we should do something about obesity in this country by empowering people to make informed decisions for themselves. But this bill is not the way to go about it.

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