There is a lot of opinion and a little bit of science for
and against the (conspicuously absent) national menu labeling law. In case you have forgotten - it has been 4 years - the law requires
restaurant chains with 20 or more outlets to post calorie information for all
standard items at the point of decision making/purchase (i.e., the menu board
or menu). If you have not been following
the issue with me, let me state up front that I am a proponent of nutrition
disclosures, especially calorie amounts, at all places where food and beverages
are sold. I believe that the information
helps certain consumers and harms none.
What I take away from the many research studies (Krieger & Saelens, 2013; Liu, 2013; Sinclair, Cooper, &
Mansfield, 2014; Wei & Miao, 2013)
that have tested local laws (and field/lab experiments) is: 1) for some people,
the information is helpful and leads them to choose lower calorie options,
while others either don’t see the information, don’t know what to do with it
(when calorie disclosures come within a context, the information is more
meaningful), or see it and actually choose higher calorie meals, and 2) some
researchers are assessing whether menu labeling has an impact on weight or BMI,
which is a long term goal and not necessarily the primary goal of calorie
disclosures.
What is of greater and more immediate interest to me is 1) whether
or not consumer attitudes about and understanding of calories change after the
introduction of calorie information and 2) whether or not the items available
to purchase become lower in calories. If
you are interested in a good over view of calorie content in major restaurant
items circa 2010, see this article by Wu (Wu & Sturm, 2013).
On that last note - do restaurant owners change their
behavior - I have something promising to report. I have seen at least 3 TV commercials from
different restaurants that post the calorie content, out loud, in a caption or
both. For example, McDonald’s states
that its egg McMuffin has 300 calories in this TV
ad, and Dunkin Donuts promotes a less than 300 calorie breakfast flat bread
here. I am pretty sure that I have seen a Taco Bell
ad showing calorie content as well. This
is something new and though I don’t have evidence to back my assertion, it is
possible that the state and local laws, along with the national labeling
expectations and all this talk about calories, is leading consumers to expect
the information and companies to provide it - and in so doing, the restaurant
owners realize that they might need to offer lower calorie options. YES, there are still plenty of ridiculous
offerings, see the CSPI Xtreme
Eating 2014, but that doesn’t negate the positive.
Block and Roberto (Block & Roberto, 2014) encourage us to look for
myriad positive outcomes of menu labeling as we continue to study the impact of
such laws, I think they are right, and I add these commercials to the examples
they provided in their recent publication (free on line).
No comments:
Post a Comment