This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 24, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Without legislative action, the FDA will have the power to levy criminal penalties against

restaurants that do not publicly post certain nutritional

information about their menus. Who benefits? Large chains and other sellers of

heavily processed, heavily standardized foods.

Ike Brannon is co-author of a new regulation magazine article,

The Menu Labeling Morass.

We spoke this week.

There's a menu labeling rule that would take effect

as of December 1st and that would require all restaurants and restaurant like establishments.

Think about your local deli.

Convenience store that might sell some sandwiches made on premises,

all of those things would have to be labeled in some way. And it sounds like, well, this is a relatively

straightforward thing. Well, not necessarily. You start thinking about how a Delhi operates.

And my local deli makes thousands of different combinations of

sandwiches you can pick your own your own meat your own toppings your own bread

whatever and so how your own toppings, your own bread, whatever.

And so how precisely you label the calories

for this particular, each particular item

is somewhat complicated.

And so they've been spending a couple of years trying to figure out precisely how to convey to us all the right information that we supposedly need in order to make our informed decisions about how to spend our calories

...