The lawsuit was filed in Superior Court of New Jersey in Middlesex County, and seeks to compel Denny's to disclose on menus the amount of sodium in each of its meals and to place a notice on its menus warning about high sodium levels. CSPI is working with the New Jersey firms of Galex Wolf, LLC and Williams Cuker Berezofsky.
Many health experts consider high dietary sodium levels to be one of the nation's top health threats. Dr. Stephen Havas, adjunct professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, says that reducing the sodium content of packaged and restaurant foods by half would save at least 150,000 lives per year.
Denny's describes itself as the largest full-service family restaurant in the United States, with more than 1,500 restaurants and annual sales of $2.4 billion.
"By concealing an important material fact about its products—namely, that that these foods have disease-promoting levels of sodium—Denny's is failing its responsibility to its customers and is in violation of the laws of New Jersey and several other states,"said CSPI litigation director Steve Gardner.
Denny's and CSPI had been in private negotiations over sodium, but those talks ended earlier this year. Shortly thereafter, the chain made small sodium reductions in a handful of items, like cheese sauce, shrimp skewers and kids' meals, but the chain did not make the kind of broad sodium reductions or menu disclosures urged by CSPI.
