On July 19, 2008, New York City took the first great leap toward informed eating. Restaurants with fifteen or more locations would be required to visibly post the caloric content of all regular menu items. This was it. This was the silver bullet, heralded by health advocates as a means of slimming our waists, eating our vegetables, and generally saving Americans from fast food and themselves.
After nearly a year and a half, the first sets of studies from NYC food labeling are in. And the results? Well…what results? The studies have shown that calorie labeling does a whole lot of nothing. Not only have patrons not changed their eating habits, one study shows an increase of 20 calories per meal. And so, the same policymakers once championing calorie counts have quietly slunk back to their drawing boards. In fact, a provision in the House’s health care bill asking for this very change seems substantially less relevant.
The result, it seems, is that a good idea will lose traction thanks to some lackluster studies. This is unfortunate. Menu labeling has loftier hopes than changing the decisions of what you want on your plate; rather, it may change how restaurants perceive their recipes and businesses as a whole.
Menus, unlike the restaurants who create them, do not operate in a free market. There is considerable information asymmetry; restaurants know when you sit at the table, you have no means of determining what’s normal and what’s not. Can you taste the difference between a burger with 200 calories of cheese, mayo, and ketchup and one with 500? I doubt it.
Think of your favorite restaurant, and why you go there—presumably there’s a favorite dish or cuisine, although maybe it’s the value, or even the atmosphere. But the calories? For most people, they’re pretty far from their mind. Thanks to this, restaurants can jack up the calorie content as needed.
But menu labeling adds another depth to consumer preference, and, more importantly, the information you consider when you decide where to eat. Right now, restaurants know you like low prices or meaningful ambience, so they compete with those. But calorie counts could, in the long run, let consumers show preference toward healthier items, incentivizing restaurants to reformulate their menus for this.
Consider The Macaroni Grill, a nation-wide, Italian food chain. Prior to menu labeling, their scallop and spinach salad clocked in at an astounding 1,270 calories. But when California started talking about calorie counts on menus, the scallop and spinach salad went on a miraculous diet; the dish is now listed at 390 calories.
This is the transformative power of menu labeling; not necessarily allowing people to make better decisions, but instead forcing businesses to. If you were watching your figure, maybe you’d order a spinach and scallop salad. But without knowing the calorie count, unbeknownst to you Macaroni Grill gets to pile on the butter, oil, and whatever other delicious things you probably shouldn’t be eating. The result was healthy eaters were drawn to Macaroni Grill, but eating no different from the rest of us. Competition in calories, though, brings a salad back to where, well, a salad should be.
Granted, menu labeling is, as the studies have shown, obviously not the cure-all to our eating out woes. But in the information era, where 24-hour news leaves no story unwatched and Google proves no answer unanswerable, the least we could do is know a little more about our food. The worst case, as we’ve seen, is…well…nothing. Americans love to eat, and they shall forever persevere and continue to do just that. But perhaps, if calories become ubiquitous, next to décor and daily specials, restaurants will take note and start to shore up their menus. After all, it can’t hurt to try.
I remember that a similar rule went in to affect in California this summer. I was on a very strict diet this summer (as I gained 20 pounds abroad in Europe) and the calorie count on menus saved my life. For example, I went to Denny’s and ordered egg whites, wheat toast and turkey bacon for a 300 calorie breakfast because I was able to see that what I normally eat was over 1000 calores. I learned the hard way that California Pizza Kitchen gives their calorie count by the slice, six slices to a pizza. So it may say that the count is 210 caloires. Well, times that by six, and you just ate a 1260 calorie lunch. I do think now, at least for me, the calorie count means little because I am not dieting. But the count does make going out a little easier for those trying to shed pounds.
So, I am not entirely sure what your point with this post is.. are you in favor of calorie labeling? Anywho, I really enjoyed reading about this, and I am interested to see what is going to happen with this in the future. as anyone who has ever tried to diet, they will know that it is more expensive to eat healthier- which is probably why restaurants have such high calorie counts. It is much less expensive to by buckets of grease and frozen produce than fresh produce and ingredients. I feel like the more laws they pass to require places to show their calorie counts, the more we are going to see consumers urging for healthier choices, which will in turn drive prices up. We can’t really get the best of both worlds i think, I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Yeah, I mean in the end, I am in favor of it, I’m just not sure it’s going to do a whole lot, at least as far as changing consumer decisions. But the way I see it is that more information can’t hurt.
And you could make the argument that right now there’s a lack of demand for healthy food, which is why the prices have driven up. If suppliers expect more people to start to want healthy food, they could shift the supply curve out, bringing down the price.
I think listing calorie counts is a great idea, and all chain restaurants should be required to do it. Whenever I have the option, I look up the counts online, and it would make it so much easier if they were right in front of me and I wasn’t stuck memorizing this information beforehand or finding out after I’ve already made the choice. I’m a huge advocate of a healthier America. Even if this doesn’t change everyone’s eating choices, I think any health-conscious person would be really grateful for the information.
I think the more information you provide on the caloric content of food the better. By disseminating better information, people will be able to make wiser choices about their dieting and the way that they eat.
I believe that providing calories only benefits people if they want it to. As Colleen said, she was watching calories and therefore ordered accordingly. However, few people actually change their food choice, but justify it differently. Saying “oh, I just wont finish it” or “I’m sure they’re overestimating anyway” (my roommate’s favorite) does not make the calories disappear. It’s sickening to see how high calories are in some foods (especially salads because of creamy dressings) that seem so healthy. Another problem with some places is that they place the nutritional information is separate brochures or menus, forcing customers to look beyond the menu to read about the food. This inconvenience may completely prevent people from checking that information at all.