New FDA Rules Require Nutritional Information for Beer

According to new regulations from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), chain restaurants—defined as those with 20 or more locations—must now provide further nutritional information for food and drink they serve, including beer.

Under the new regulations, breweries will need to provide restaurants with the number of calories, grams of fat, calories from fat (if applicable), carbohydrates, protein, sodium content and other significant nutrients per serving.

“To comply with restaurants who want specific values for each beer, a brewer will need to submit for laboratory testing all beers that are regular menu items … or they could be kicked off the menus,” says Brewers Association director Paul Gatza. “A restaurant does have the option of using the standard government reference for beer, but this information is not likely to be very accurate for many of the beer styles craft brewers make.”

For Harpoon president Charlie Storey, providing restaurants with this information won’t be terribly difficult. “It is an additional item to deal with, but in our case we have this information and it will not be a big obstacle to provide it,” says Storey. “We always believe that providing consumers with information about the food and beverages they are consuming is good. There are times when this information can be misunderstood or taken out of context, and in those cases no one benefits.”

While the rules are good for consumer knowledge, they aren’t without their flaws, says Gatza. “The biggest conflict is that TTB will not allow all of the information on labels that the FDA will require on menus, on menu boards or available upon request. Having two different data sets seems contradictory.”

In the Federal Register commentary, the FDA recognizes the possibility of confusion between agencies, but feels the ruling is “more consistent with [how] meat, poultry and egg products are also regulated by USDA.”

The law is slated to take effect in late 2015, but will likely face contention from various sectors of the food service industry in the interim. ■