The Food and Drug Administration has released proposed rules that chain restaurants and vending machine operators likely will soon have to follow to give consumers very specific information on calorie counts.
Chains with 20 or more restaurants and owners of 20 or more vending machines would have to list calorie counts in the same type size as they list menu items or prices, whichever is larger. Calorie counts on vending machines would have to be “clear and conspicuous.”
There is, of course, little doubt that Americans eat too many of the wrong foods and not enough of the right foods to promote good health. That is regrettable.
But it is even more regrettable when the federal government seizes power nowhere delegated to it in the Constitution. We can find no evidence that the framers of the Constitution believed Washington should be authorized to dictate the information provided in restaurant menus.
A government that can assume unjust power over something so seemingly “minor” can also assume unjust power on matters that are much more consequential.