Janet Rosenbaum writes:
New York City has recently required restaurants with uniform menus to post calorie content on their menus with a font size equal to the prices. This initiative may not decrease obesity, but if we’re able to gather good data, posting calories on menus could help us better understand how people choose food.
Currently, we don’t have a good understanding of how people choose what they eat. Observations of people’s food choices through nutritional surveys and food diaries tell us only what people will admit to eating. Laboratory experiments tell us how people who volunteer for psychology experiments choose foods in a new environment, but may not generalize to larger populations in real life situations. Non-laboratory experiments with vending machines have found that people will buy more healthy foods when healthy food is “subsidized” and when less healthy food is “taxed”, but nutritional information is not immediately available to subjects even in these experiments: the foods which were manipulated were pretty obvious candidates for healthy and unhealthy foods such as carrot sticks and potato chips. Those looking to go on a health kick may be doing so because their diet does little but to provide their bodies with unwanted toxins – many try things like a mercury detox in order to cleanse their bodies.
We also don’t know how much knowledge about food people have: when someone chooses a high calorie food, we don’t know whether they have chosen that food in ignorance of its calorie content or despite its calorie content. Putting calories on the menu in a visible way gives consumers information which is more readily available than on food packages, and reduces the second problem: some people will read the calorie content of their food when making their choices, and the calorie content may influence their choices.
If calorie information becomes widespread, we could even begin to discuss an elasticity of demand according to both the price and calorie content of the food, as well as a willingness to pay for fewer calories. Just thinking about the McDonald’s menu, people can minimize the number of calories they eat by choosing either the least expensive (basic hamburger + fries) or the most expensive items on the menu (salads, grilled chicken).
Some have speculated that posting calorie information on the menus won’t affect behavior at all because people choosing to eat at places with unhealthy food can’t expect lower calories, but that seems naive. After all, even people shopping at expensive stores are somewhat price sensitive, and all retailers go to lengths to make people feel as though they are getting a bargain.
The inclusion of calorie information on menus gives a tremendous opportunity for social scientists, if only we can get sales data suitable for a quasi-experiment (pre-post with control). Any ideas?
My first thought here is that I imagine that people who eat salad and grilled chicken at McDonalds are only at Mickey’s in the first place because someone else in their party wants a burger and fries. There’s got to be some information on this sort of thing from marketing surveys (although these might not be easily accessible to researchers outside the industry).
My other thought is that it would be great if the food industry and public health establishment could work together on this (see note 4 here).
There's another thing… some people, especially those into the Atkins diet and similar ones, believe that calories are not simplistically related to fattening, that calories are not a good indicator for the effect a certain dish will have on one's health.
They will look for, instead, for the carbs content.
McDonald's already publishes detailed nutritional values (inc. calories and carbs and whatnot) on the back of the paper they put on trays… at least in Romania. They introduced this a few months ago. Their sales data could tell us a lot, potentially.
What exactly constitutes a "uniform menu"? Does that primarily affect chain fast food places (McDs and analogues) or does it also affect, say, taco stands and Mom & Pop sandwich places that happen to post a menu? I can see how that would be pretty burdensome for a place like that. It's *possible* to estimate the nutritional content from a food's constitutive parts uses the data that USDA posts (in a computer friendly form even!), but it's not entirely trivial.
Erm…or even, because of its calorie content.
Spend some time in Japan and you'll know what I mean :-)
Personally I think sales data would tell you surprising little. For it to tell you what effect nutrional labeling had on consumers you'd want to look at their whole diet. For example, if someone wanted a burger and fries they calorie information might have no effect on their meal choice, but it might influence their diet. Most people who restrict calorific intake or tried to eat healthily do it over a longer period (24 hours or a week). If I pig out at lunch I usually try and eat less later (or balance high fat, high sugar snacks with vegetables or fruit).
I'd suggest a diary study method following an appropriate sample over time would be better than looking at sales.
Thom
I don't know about McDonald's salads (I hate salads for the most part), but I get their grilled chicken a lot. In my opinion it is one of their best tasting sandwiches, and has been for awhile. And let there be no mistake; I get the supersize fries and the supersize diet coke too.
while I rarely go to fast food places All, I know is that after a really long run, I generally like to treat myself to a high calorie super sized burger and fries, but I guess that is different as I had to earn it…
Why is it that whenever someone mentions fast Food people automatically point the finger at MCDonalds? There are many other fast food places such as, hot dog on a stick, jack-in-the-box, yees chinese food, panda express, steak and fries, mrs. fields cookies(fastfood desert) and many more. As a kid I ate at MCdonald's a lot, as I grew in age I made a vow to stop eating at MCdonalds. I would complain about how unhealthy it was,but I would still continue eating at taco bell or hot dog on a stick. My overall objective for discussing this is to inform people that if their goal is to abandoned the fast food chain don't just discontinue eating at Mcdonalds. Discontinue eating at every fast food restaurant. Also, I've always wondered is personal health concerns or self indulgence the reason why people eat fast food?
i love fast food!!!!!
ok first of all its not anyones fault but yours if ur obese uif u cnt control were u eat and how…srry
I believe preliminary data indicates that people will eat fewer calories when the caloric content of food is explicitly given. While the amount of few calories has not been significant hopefully this will allow people to develop healthier habits just by being more aware of what they are consuming.