Eating by the Numbers

[groovedaddy]

BURIED in the nearly 2,000 pages of the health reform bill passed by the House on Saturday is a provision requiring chain restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus. Given the worsening problem of obesity in the United States, and the superiority of disease prevention over treatment, calorie posting seems like a great idea. However, research by us and others suggests that it is unlikely to have much, if any, impact on eating or obesity.

There have now been three studies of New York City’s menu-labeling legislation, which took effect last year and serves as a model for the national legislation. One relatively small study conducted by researchers at New York University and Yale and published in the journal Health Affairs found no impact of labels on healthier eating, although the sample wasn’t large enough to detect modest changes.

We conducted a somewhat different study, supported by the United States Department of Agriculture and published in American Economic Review earlier this year, that examined purchases by 1,479 McDonald’s customers in New York City in 2007 and 2008, both before and after menu labeling went into effect.

Beyond simply measuring the impact of labeling, we gave some diners information about how many calories one is recommended to consume per day or per meal, anticipating that this information would help diners to make use of the posted calorie information. However, we found that this did not help diners use menu labels, and we saw no impact on calorie consumption.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/opinion/13lowenstein.html?th&emc=th

[ZombieHorde]

1. The labeling would help me make a decision between several desirable meals.

For example: If I were at a restaurant, and could not decide between two yummy looking chicken sandwiches, I would choose the one with fewer calories. I am happy about this.

[pansypoo53219]

2. BAN

high fructose corn syrup!

[unpossibles]

3. I love the calorie labeling on menus here, as do my friends

More than once, I've been surprised at one, and I tend to be an informed consumer when it comes to food. I don't think there's anything wrong with giving the consumer more information, otherwise it's all marketing going into decisions.

[supernova]

4. Could this possibly stop the chains from serving over-sized meals?

As someone who has to watch my weight, I would really love to see what the calorie and nutritional cost of a restaurant meal is.

I know the better restaurants are great about portion control. Yay! But they take so much flak for it, like serving normal sized portions or small portions of expensive dishes is somehow miserly. No it's not, it's the degree to which we've come to think of oversized plates of food as normal.Most popular mass-market places serve what you could typically eat in two, possible three meals.

I wish they'd bring restaurant meal labeling to NC.

edit: Spelling.