Health

SACRAMENTO (CBS/AP) ― California has stepped up its campaign against bad diets, bulging waistlines and clogged arteries when three new laws dealing with restaurant and school food took effect Wednesday.

The Golden State is the first in the nation to require restaurants to disclose how many calories are in their standard menu items.

The laws also bar schools from offering students fries, baked goods and other dishes made with oils, margarine or shortening containing artery-clogging trans fats, and they prevent high schools from selling students sodas.

"California is becoming a healthier place for people to live, especially for California children," said Harold Goldstein, executive director of the nonprofit California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

The new calorie-count requirements are modeled after a New York City ordinance and affect 123 chains with at least 20 restaurants in California.

Those restaurants can either list the calories in their standard items on menus and indoor menu boards or they can offer customers brochures listing the amount of calories, saturated fat, salt and carbohydrates in those items.

Starting in 2011, the calorie counts in standard menu items -- food and drinks the restaurants sell at least half the year -- will have to be listed on menus and indoor menu boards. Drive-through customers will have to be offered brochures providing nutritional information about standard menu choices.

The law's author, state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, said the measure will give diners "reliable, accessible nutrition information that will help them make more informed, healthier choices."

He said he focused the measure on large restaurant chains to avoid imposing a "significant burden" on mom-and-pop operations, but he said it would still cover more than 17,000 restaurants.

"I think it sets a high standard for the rest of the country to follow," he added.

The California Restaurant Association agreed to support the legislation after Padilla added language that barred similar local ordinances and made other changes.

"Obviously it's better to have statewide standards rather than a patchwork of local ordinances," said Daniel Conway, a spokesman for the association.

The trans-fat ban in school food follows earlier legislation that barred artificial trans fats in restaurant dishes.

It bars artificially created trans fats in school food sold in vending machines and by private, on-campus food service operations, including some big-name fast-food outlets. Previous legislation covered school cafeteria food.

Trans fats occur naturally in small amounts in meat and dairy products. Most trans fats are created when vegetable oil is treated with hydrogen to create baked and fried foods with a longer shelf life.

A 2006 review of trans fat studies by the New England Journal of Medicine concluded there was a strong connection between consumption of trans fats and heart disease.

The soda ban for high schools follows an earlier ban on the drinks at elementary and junior high schools.

The new law will allow high schools to sell students only fruit and vegetable drinks with no added sweeteners, bottled water with no sweeteners, low-fat and nonfat milk, soy milk, rice milk and similar nondairy milks and electrolyte-replacing sports drinks with no more than 42 grams of added sweetener per 20-ounce serving.

The measure, by Sen. Elaine Alquist, D-Santa Clara, doesn't cover drinks sold at sporting events and other school-sponsored activities that take place at least a half hour after the end of the school day.

Goldstein said there's a "lot of evidence" that sodas contribute to childhood obesity. "It's a lot of extra calories with no nutritional value," he said.

Phyllis Bramson-Paul, director of the state Department of Education's Nutrition Services Division, said she didn't expect an uproar when students return to classes this fall and find no sodas on the cafeteria menu.

"A lot of kids, if you start phasing it out gradually, they don't miss it," she said. "They adjust."

The soda ban, approved in 2005 in a bill by then-Sen. Martha Escutia, D-Norwalk, started as a requirement in 2007 that at least half the drinks sold at high schools be fruit and vegetable drinks, bottled water, milk and sports drinks.

California laws usually take effect on the Jan. 1 after they're approved by lawmakers and signed by the governor, but occasionally their implementation is delayed by months or years to give enforcement officials or the people targeted by the statute more time to prepare.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)