The FDA Is Requiring Some Restaurants Provide Nutritional Info For Beer, And Brewers Are Pissed

The New York Post recently surveyed a selection of New York state brewers to find out what they think about the new rules. (The Post, delightfully, refers to government health regulators as “FDA busybodies.”) Brewers are nervous, fearing new regulatory costs and decreased sales. The fear reaches far outside New York; we reached out to Speakeasy, a craft brewer based in San Francisco, who echoed what the New York brewers said. “The new FDA requirement will be a significant hurdle for many breweries, particularly those who operate at a smaller scale and have a large portfolio of beers that would need to be tested before they’re sold in a chain restaurant,” says Brian Stechschulte of Speakeasy.

Yet from the FDA’s perspective, this is pretty simple. “Americans eat and drink about one-third of their calories away from home, so making accurate and easy-to-see calorie information available for these foods is an important part of an overall effort to help consumers make their own informed choices for themselves and their families,” said Lauren Kotwicki, a press officer at the FDA. And further, support is generally high for the initiative: “The majority of comments received supported covering alcohol because of impacts on public health,” she says.

In short: This is a part of the provisions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and the final rules were published on December 1, 2014. They were supposed to go into effect on December 1, 2015, but after conversations with (and, presumably, complaints from) both brewers and restaurant owners, they were delayed a year, to December 1, 2016. The rule requires that alcoholic beverages, which are “standard items” listed on menus and menu boards of chains with more than 20 stores will have to list certain nutritional information (total fat, calories from fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrates, dietary fiber, sugar, and protein). There’s a little flexibility; some drinks can have calorie counts provided in a range rather than a specific number, and extremely seasonal beverages (like beers that are sold for fewer than 60 days per year) are exempt. Phew!

Brewers hate the idea, claiming that the testing to provide accurate information is expensive and time consuming, and that it might discourage these chains from carrying as wide a variety of beers. “If a large number of breweries choose not to comply and forego chain business because it’s not a large percentage of their earnings, then it could mean the menu selection for consumers will decrease, which would be a shame,” says Stechschulte.

There’s also a fear that drinkers will suffer sticker-shock at being presented with high-calorie drinks. How many people really know the nutritional information of beer and wine, even people who are conscious of calorie counts in other foods? And those calorie counts can be high: Non-light beers have an average of around 150 calories per 12 ounces, and some of the more specialty-type craft beers soar above that. Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot, for example, is a very popular barleywine-style ale, and tops out at a whopping 330 calories and 30.3 grams of carbohydrates.

On the other hand, if the point of the FDA’s labeling push is to discourage people from consuming too many calories, evidence is dubious that the strategy will work. A Washington Post survey from 2011 indicated that sales of high-fat, high-calorie products did not much decrease after nutritional labeling on them became mandatory. But the FDA said nothing of the sort to me; instead they stated that this is simply an attempt to make data available to consumers, who can then do with it what they will.