Requiring Calorie Counts on Menu Probably Won't Make People Healthier - Christine Rousselle

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the highly-touted (and contested) parts of the Affordable Care Act was that all chain restaurants would have to provide calorie counts on their menus. Now, new studies have shown that this requirement is having little-to-no impact on the food choices made by consumers—but the FDA is continuing to expand the program anyhow.

From Huffington Post:

But extra information may not translate into healthier choices, experts say. With a few exceptions, “the overwhelming majority of the research” finds that diners don’t eat less when restaurants post the number of calories in their meals, according to David Just, a Cornell professor who has researched how portion labeling influences food choice.

People who make dining decisions based on calorie counts already have a pretty good sense of how many calories are in a Big Mac or burrito, Just noted. And most diners who head to a restaurant chain go for a specific item and rarely look at the menu anyway, said Maeve Webster, a senior director at DataSsential, a company that studies food trends. If customers don't look at the menu, they won't see how many calories are in that serving of french fries.

"It will be a very rare case where a restaurant will full-on lose customers by putting calorie counts up there,” Webster said.

Shocker: people who want to eat hamburgers with grilled cheese sandwiches as buns will continue to eat them, regardless of the calorie count.

Read more:
Requiring Calorie Counts on Menu Probably Won't Make People Healthier - Christine Rousselle

Related articles

• Restaurants to list calories in every menu; experts say it would not stop people from eating a lot
• New FDA rules require restaurants to post calorie info
• FDA releases sweeping calorie labeling rules