A chat with Mary Abbott Hess, ADA president

Nation's Restaurant News, Nov 19, 1990 by Rick Telberg

A chat with May Abbott Hess, ADA president

What role do foodservice operators, whether they are in hospitals or schools or in fast food or fine dining, have in American nutrition?

A big role. First of all, a lot of dietitians are foodservice operators or are key players in foodservice operations. Nutrition is pretty irrelevant unless it's turned into food. What we want is for people to eat our advice.

There is little point in our being advocates for things that are not available, not convenient or that don't taste good. Recommendations that fit into life-styles are accepted and one that don't, aren't. When the public is asked, as any number of studies have said, the three things that they want are taste, nutrition and safety. In that order. Dietitians and the restaurant industry should be a team.

The ADA issued a statement in support of a series of National Academy of Sciences recommendations that included one that would call for labeling for foods in restaurants.

That is not our position. We are certainly in favor of new nutrional labeling. But not for restaurants.

Then what is the ADA's position?

We want material to be available if it is reasonable and feasible to do so.

Reasonable and feasible?

We realize that it is not realistic for small operators and people with changing menus to provide the kind of detail and nutritional information that large operators with standardized products can provide. In situations where there are rigid specifications for production - a system that has a uniform product - nutritional information should be available for those who want it.

But we do not have any position on the where, what and how.

Does that suggest that in an institutional setting, where they work form detailed manuals and recipes, they can provide nutritional information to their clients - whether college students or patients in a hospital or in newsletter form sent home to parents of school children?

We haven't discussed it specifically. But if the information is available, it should be shared.

There should be nutritious choices that do provide lower fat, lower salt, lower-calorie options for those patrons that want them. But I am not saying every single item on a restaurant menu should be low, low, low. I am saying tht anybody should be able to choolse any variety of healthful meals from the menu.

If restaurants would do that first, that would make me enormously happy. Whether or not they tell somebody how many milligrams of sodium are in the green beans, to me, matters very little.

How can dietitians and restarateurs work together to make that happen?

Lots of ways. For instance, the National Restaurant Association offers a nutritional analysis service to its members. And the American Culinary Federation has taken some enormous initiatives in calling for mandatory nutritional course work for people training as chefs.

What's the first phone call a restaurateur should make if he wants a more nutritionally conscious menu?

All he has to do is call the state or local dietetic association.

But that's not as simple as it sounds.

I know that. And that's why, by the end of this year, I can assure you that it will be much easier for someone looking for a dietitian. Dietitians wonder why no one who wants one knows how to call one. And people who want a dietitian don't know how to call one.

So one of the things that we have to do at the ADA is make dietitians much more accessible whether for individual counseling or whether it's a restaurateur who needs some expertise.

Maybe about two-thirds of the ADA's membership is connected in some way with health care. And in this country it's a system in disarray.

Basic foodservice is part of overhead, the bed charge. So they try and buy cheap laundry, and they try and buy cheap food.

That's no way to run a hospital.

I personally think that a massive overhaul of the country's health-care system is inevitable.

What's your prescription for the health-care crisis?

I don't have a final answer, but I do know that nutrition is part of it.

It's funny, though: The better we do in prevention the harder it is to prove we prevent. How do you prove that by eating better or more healthily - so you don't get killer diseases - that you have saved the country money?

In our medical system people talk prevention. But they don't pay for prevention; they pay for treatment. We would much rather be in the prevention business than in the treatment business. I consider working with foodservice as prevention; it's health promotion.