Two articles this morning. The first is about a new rule taking effect on January 1. Large chain restaurants (those having 15 or more locations) will be required to provide information about calories, saturated fat, carbohydrate and sodium content. King County is the first in the country to introduce these requirements.

The rules require restaurants to use a “reasonable basis” to justify the nutrition information that will be provided to consumers.

The county has assembled a list of software packages, nutrition companies and laboratories with the ability to analyze the nutritional content of a burrito, pizza slice or salad.

In a related article, Scripps Television Station investigated the nutritional claims by many major restaurants. The findings showed that the servings many restaurants claimed as being low calorie or healthy were in fact, not. Many of the meals contained twice the calories and as much as eight times the saturated fat then advertised. For example:

Taco Bell “Fresco Grilled Steak Soft Taco” had four times as much fat and almost twice as many calories as advertised. The steak taco is supposed to have 4.5 grams of fat and 160 calories; testing showed it to actually have 20 grams of fat and 297 calories.

The RDA for saturated fat is 20 grams.