The Affordable Care Act (ACA)--"Obamacare" as some label it--includes a provision requiring chain restaurants to provide calorie counts on their menus. Now a political struggle is erupting over whether the provision should apply to movie theaters--and to popcorn. Get the big box, butter it up, and you're looking at some serious calories: The Center for Science in the Public Interest claims that a medium popcorn in one typical movie chain has 1200. But should a law covering "restaurants" include snacks sold at movie theaters? (Or amusement parks, airplanes and trains?)
The decision on this weighty matter rests with the Food and Drug Administration, and with an obscure yet incredibly important policymaking process, agency rulemaking. In rulemaking, executive agencies translate broad and general laws like the ACA into specific, enforceable rules.
In the battle over popcorn, it's the movie industry versus consumer public interest groups, chiefly the Center for Science in the Public Interest--and the National Restaurant Association, which apparently figures that if they have to abide by the rules, so should movie theaters.
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