Providing for Consideration of H.R. 339, Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act

Providing for Consideration of H.R. 339, Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act -- (House of Representatives - March 10, 2004)

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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, only with this Republican leadership would an effort to promote personal responsibility begin with allowing companies to be irresponsible without accountability. Unless the public be confused that the Republicans are actually concerned with doing something about the obesity epidemic in this country that we have heard so much about, this legislation has little to do with preventing what the Centers for Disease Control yesterday said will be this Nation's leading cause of preventable deaths by next year.

Rather, by shielding manufacturers, distributors, and food sellers from liability, this bill is the next installment in the majority's series of tort reform bills in disguise, attempting to give yet another industry open-ended protection so irresponsible conduct is not punished or held accountable.

But that should not distract us from discussing the very real problem of obesity in this country. Obesity affects nearly 65 percent of adults. The rates are rising. The problem is even more pressing for teens, teenage obesity rates tripling in the last 20 years. All told, obesity costs the Nation $117 billion a year in health care and related costs, the single largest drain or our Nation's health care system.

Obesity leads to diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, stroke and arthritis, conditions the CDC says will kill a half million people every year by 2005.

No one here is under the illusion that there is a one-step solution to reducing obesity. With ads encouraging us to eat too much of the wrong kinds of foods, neighborhoods designed for driving and not walking, restaurants serving ever-increasing portion sizes, McDonalds' announcement this week notwithstanding, slowing the obesity epidemic will take a multifaceted effort.

And Congress has an obligation to engage itself in that effort. There are countless other steps we could take that would support Americans' efforts to eat well, maintain a healthy weight, such as getting junk food out of schools, strengthening the Centers for Disease Control nutrition and physical activity division, fully funding CDC's VERB campaign, which promotes physical activity in young people.

With legislation I have introduced, the Meal Education and Labeling Act, we could strike a real blow at frivolous litigation aimed at restaurants and at the same time we can actually do something about obesity. It addresses one of leading causes of the rise in obesity rates and that is the fact that people are eating out more frequently.

Today, we spend about half of our food dollars at restaurants. In 1970, Americans spent just 26 percent of their food dollars on restaurant meals. Children eat almost twice as many calories when they eat at a restaurant as they do when they eat at home.

The Meal Education Labeling Act would extend nutrition labeling beyond packaged foods that you find at your grocery store to include foods at fast-food and other chain restaurants. It would do it by requiring fast-food and chain restaurants, that is, companies with 20 or more restaurants under the same trade name, not mom and pop restaurants, they would have to list calories, saturated plus trans fats, and sodium on printed menus and calories on menu boards. But most importantly, it would give consumers the necessary nutritional information to make healthy choices for themselves.

You might think that Americans do not want to be bothered with additional information they supposedly already know, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Not only do three-quarters of American adults report using the food labels on a regular basis that they find on packaged foods in the grocery stores, but 48 percent say the nutrition information on those labels has caused them to change their minds about what they buy.

Giving people the information that they need to make informed decisions about what they eat is the kind of approach that this body should be taking today in addressing obesity.

We may avoid litigation if we move in this direction. That is a real step toward helping encourage personal responsibility in food consumption. It can be done in a way that protects industry, does not hurt our mom and pop restaurants. Instead, as we have seen countless times before, this majority has chosen again to use a very important public health issue to pursue a narrow and a completely unrelated political agenda.

Mr. Speaker, we should do something about obesity in this country, but this bill is not the way to go about it.