The Los Angels City Council voted to draft a law that would require large chain restaurants in the city of Los Angeles to follow rules which were already imposed in unicorporated Los Angeles County and New York City. Large chain restaurants in the city are required to provide nutritional information on printed menus and menus boards.

The vote follows a report released by the California Department of Public Health which shows that the state’s residents have gained 360 million pounds of excess weight in the past 10 years, and one-third of children, one in four teens and more than half of all adults are overweight or obese. The percentage of obese adults in Los Angeles County rose from 14.3 percent in 1997 to 20.9 percent in 2005, the Department of Public Health said.

New York has a similar regulation, which implies a fine that ranges from $200 to $2,000 for chain eateries which fail to comply with the rule. A similar law is being considered by California lawmakers. Chain restaurants such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Starbucks, KFC, Dunkin Donuts and many more now have to comply with the new rule.

“What we are doing is providing information to parents so they can think about what their kids are eating,” councilman Jose Huizar said. The measure comes two months after the council banned fast-food restaurants in part of South Los Angeles. The state bill would require 17,000 chain restaurants to provide information on calories, grams of saturated fat, grams of trans fat, carbohydrates and milligrams of sodium per item.

A study which analyzed the nutrition of children’s meals from 13 different restaurant chains found that 93 percent of the 1,474 options had more than 430 calories, the recommended amount of calories for the average child aged 4-8 at a single meal. Chains offering more than 430 calories at a single meal included KFC, Taco Bell, Jack in the Box, Sonic, McDonald’s and Burger King.