Wait they currently don’t?
The United States is a seriously weird country. You can get arrested for crossing an empty street but restaurants don’t have to tell you what’s in your own food. Seriously.
I’m shocked that it isn’t a law already. It’s been obligatory in the EU for 10 years. Although a lot of restaurants don’t follow it…
This will likely turn out exactly how proposition 65 turned out… the one where they have to disclose if something may cause cancer or not. They literally just slap it on every single product whether it contains cancer causing stuff or not. So I can see every menu having “may contain every allergen known to man” next to every item now lol.
This won’t fly with food. Companies are no longer allowed to use “may contain X” as a catchall. They now need to deliberately add X to their product.
Inb4 Trump fixes that with an EO.
Everyone ignores prop 65 because the consequences are so distant. But anaphylaxis is very immediate. No one is going to take that kind of risk. That gives a much higher incentive to properly label things.
They only have incentive to not get sued. I can totally see them label everything as potentially containing allergens such as peanuts and shellfish and stuff just so they can say “oh well we warned you” when there is a case of anaphylaxis.
Allergens aren’t dangerous to your health they’re just dangerous to some people’s health. Personally I can stuff my face with peanuts and nothing happens, there should be people that we kill.
If somebody ordered an omelet and it turned out to have peanut in it for some reason and they subsequently died that would be a pretty hefty lawsuit, so I’m honestly surprised this isn’t already a requirement.
Which people would you like to kill exactly?
I haven’t come across a restaurant that didn’t follow it
I could name you at least 10 off the top of my head in the city I live in.
This is good, but I wish it included suppliers. Too many restaurants don’t actually know if some of their ingredients — especially processed ingredients like flour — may have been cross contaminated and don’t want to statements about certain things as a result. I worry this will result in false sense of safety by consumers with allergies because the restaurant doesn’t use it directly but uses a contaminated ingredient, or restaurants listing all potential major allergens on everything to cover themselves.
Their suppliers should already have that information available, especially if they also sell their products to consumers.
How different is California from the EU? It’s probably a thorn in the eye of the US 😄
This is already done in the UK and it’s pretty useful.
I just ordered food at an airport lounge in the US and thought it was cool to see the allergens listed next to each food item.
Lmfao why are we fighting for telling people what they’re eating? We have got to start causing a scene or were fucked.
Two reasons:
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Sometimes what a place uses as an ingredient in a food item is not obvious.
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People are incredibly stupid.
But mostly item 1.
I think this should be a no brainer easy slam dunk for every jurisdiction ever. We have real problems that really aren’t all that much harder to solve and we’re not looking at them.
People should be able to readily tell what they’re about to eat for a myriad of reasons.
Also, 100% agree with what you said, just wanted to drive what I was saying home
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How would you ever know??? Anything with a protein chain or protein-like chain can be an allergen. That’s pretty much all food.
This is bound to end up with “all items on our menu may cause cancer… AND contain allergens that may put a susceptible person into anaphylactic shock.”
Jesus christ, dude, we already do this on food packaging. What’s up your ass? Read two paragraphs into the article:
“They will have to disclose ingredients including milk, eggs, shellfish and tree nuts […]” That’s basically just what we already do on food packaging: list common allergens. Fucking no shit they’re not exhausting every single possible allergy. Again, what problem do you actually have here besides the fact that people with food allergies might have easier lives?
And by the way, the California Prop 65 joke you’re making isn’t indicative of government overreach or myopia; it’s indicative of how extremely present carcinogens are in the products we use. The list of Prop 65 ingredients is very thoroughly vetted, and items are only included when a clear, causal link to cancer can be reliably established.
They don’t want to read a menu. What makes you think they want to read an article? You’re responding to people who want to point to pictures when they select their food.
Wow, what a dumb fucking thing to write out.
Just clearly list the ingredients
That way I don’t have to badger the waiter with my 10+ allergies AND hopefully not forget one until I see it on my plate
You know they don’t want to do that. If they did, people would ask questions like “How come my 40$ homemade Spaghetti with fresh spinach sauce lists soylecithin, yeast extract and xanthan gum as ingredients?”
Bonkers level dumbassery
Look how other countries do it . List the most common allegens which covers over 95% of the population. Thats a good step.