Although the regulation gets an A for effort, it seems that putting calorie counts on chain restaurant menus has little to no impact on diners’ food choices.
Although the regulation gets an A for effort, it seems that putting calorie counts on chain restaurant menus has little to no impact on diners’ food choices.
A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon showed that forcing people to confront the caloric reality of their order didn’t do much to change it.
It didn’t even help when researchers tried to put the options into perspective, offering additional information to aid in wise decision-making.
They discovered this by camping out at a 2 New York City McDonalds one day and convincing over 1100 people to join in on their experiment.
The participants were split into three groups – those with no additional guidance, those who were informed of the recommended daily calorie intake, and those who were advised on the caloric maximum for the meal.
It turned out that people who wanted a Big Mac got one, regardless of how much advice they were – or weren’t – given.
Even though the posting move is a bust on the consumer-influencing end, there’s still hope that having to publish the numbers will lead restaurants to make calorie-conscious choices.
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