Picture this: it’s December of 2015.* You have purchased a nutrition calculator software license, calculated the nutrition values of your menu items, followed the FDA’s guidance on how to post calories on your menus and menu boards and you also have your additional nutrition information available for your guests upon request. However, one wrong keystroke led to an inaccurate calorie value on your menu boards and the FDA takes notice. When the federal inspector asks for your two levels of certification for your posted nutritional values, what will you tell them? Completion of your nutritional analysis is just step one in ensuring that your establishment is FDA-compliant for menu labeling. What happens after the calories are posted is just as important in the eyes of the FDA and local health inspectors monitoring compliance in your restaurant.
The first step for having approved certifications for the FDA is to know what the “reasonable basis” is behind your posted nutritional values. The FDA has approved several analytical methods for generating nutritional information. Nutrient database analysis, laboratory analysis and cookbooks are the three methods that are cited most frequently in the menu labeling publications. Combinations of these “reasonable bases” may also be used. When verifying how a selected method was chosen as “reasonable,” you must be able to provide several pertinent pieces of information, as outlined by the FDA in the final menu labeling guidelines. For example, when using a nutritional database, the covered establishment must be able to provide the following in response to an FDA investigation:
- The name and version of the database
- The recipes that were used as a basis for the nutrient declarations
- Amounts of each ingredient that were used in the database
- Calculations that were done in the database
- Detailed listings of all nutrient values determined for each menu item
- Any other pertinent information – i.e. moisture loss, cooking yields, etc.
The information above, whether supplied by a third party or not, must also be accompanied by a signed and dated statement by a responsible individual at the corporate level who can attest to the methods used and declare that they are reasonable and accurate.
The second certification for a covered establishment must come from the individual at the store level. A responsible individual at every store location must sign and date a document that states all cooking methods, ingredients, temperatures, etc. adhere to the factors that were used to generate the final nutrition information. This means that if the nutritional value of a fried item was calculated based on the fryer being set to 350-degrees, the restaurant must continue to fry that item at that temperature because altering it could change the caloric and fat content. If the ingredients or the preparation of an item is changed, the nutritional information must be updated accordingly on the menus and menu boards, as well as on the additional nutritional information that’s being held at each store.
One major concern franchisors have with the menu labeling regulations is how they’ll make sure all franchisees are following the proper recipes and using approved ingredients. Having each store certify that their preparation methods and serving sizes adhere to those used to calculate the published nutritional information is a great way to hold franchise locations responsible for what they’re doing in the kitchen. If the corporate headquarters is providing the published nutritional content, then the franchisees must abide by the recipe instructions in place to be able to use those values. Otherwise, a single franchisee will need to get separate nutritional information analyzed which would need to be done in a very short window before the compliance date arrives in eight months.
When it comes to being 100% compliant with the menu labeling guidelines, having published calories on your menus and additional nutrition information at each location is just the start. Certifications will be a large part of compliance, and the FDA will request these whenever a posted value is questioned. Avoid the headache of having to pull together these two certifications with the FDA knocking on your door, and make them a part of your preliminary menu labeling work. Then, come December 1st, you can rest easy knowing that all necessary parts of the guidelines have been checked off of your list!
Questions regarding your menu’s nutritional analysis? Don’t hesitate to call MenuTrinfo at 888-767-6368 to get answers today!
*This blog was published prior to the change in deadline for menu labeling. The deadline is now December 1, 2016.
