Estimating Calories

Burton, S., Creyer, E. H., Kees, J., & Huggins, K. (2006). Attacking the obesity epidemic: the potential health benefits of providing nutrition information in restaurants. American Journal of Public Health, 96(9), 1669-1675.

This post refers to one of the studies I read in preparing my project ideas for a labeling initiative both on and off campus.  I like this article because the researchers asked a large group of people to estimate the amount of calories and fats in certain restaurant meals for which the scientists had the actual real values.  (the people who participated were at least high school educated (97%) and 60% female, with half above age 39 and half below.

The participants were given a description of the item and the serving size, as if they were reading a menu.  The researchers had two studies going on, but in this first one, there were 193 people.  There were ten food items for them to assess and five of them were considered less healthy than the other four, with a sixth being extremely unhealthy (re: amount of fat and cals).  The hypothesis (or assumption) was that the persons would guess closer to the truth with the healthier items.  That was in large part true, but the group overwhelmingly (90%) underestimated all the items' calories and fat grams.  The average amount of calories by which they erred was 642 and they were off by 44 grams on the fat content.  The average healthy meal had 543 calories and the subjects guessed 500.  The five less healthy items had an average of 1336 cals and 76 grams of fat (OH MY) and the group incorrectly guessed that those meals had 694 calories and 32 fat grams.  The worst item - cheese fries with ranch dressing  - had an actual calorie count of 3010 - yes three thousand calories and 217 grams of fat.  Thus - it is important to provide calorie information at the point of purchase.  It may indeed change a customer's mind - leading to a possible decrease in average caloric intake for  Americans.  At the same time, people providing those meals may very well shudder at having to put a little food tag next to a dish that says it has over 100g of fat and SO, they will revise the recipe! 

The second part of the study was to compare purchasing intent,  perceptions of weight gain and risk of heart disease based on the information provided.  So three groups were involved.  One group only got the description of the food, another received the description and calorie info while the third received calorie and fat and salt info. The researchers looked at the perception of weight gain for instance if a person was just given a description of a burger, compared to someone who also learned that the burger had 600 calories, compared to someone who knew it had 600 calories and 45 g of fat.  Same scenario with heart disease, and similarly with intent to purchase.  Does the information change anything? 

Want to know what happened?  You can view the abstract and the figure showing the change associated with the information here.  Succinctly,  calorie information alone is sufficient to change behavior - and this is all that the new law requires.