It looks like a recent study done by NYU and Yale seem to indicate that posting caloric content in menu items at restaurants do not affect or actually adversely affect what consumers order. I suppose I’ll have to take a closer look at how this study was done, but I suspect there are a few things going on here that perhaps are being overlooked in terms of consumer behavior.

1) Many of the caloric value menus I’ve seen are confusing and ambiguous, even for me to look at, and I pay close attention to calories in my foods. Some menus display huge ranges of calories for a single item, making it nearly impossible to understand what determines if it’s 200-400 calories more or less within the range posted. If you pause the above video at the :21 second mark, you’ll see a menu (I’d guess this is Chipolte due to my love of food) — the ranges displayed are actually pretty ludicrous. The last item, “Salad” has a calorie range from 155 to 823 calories???! Hmmm, I think I’ll order that one and hope it’s only 155 calories. This is useless information for most people.

2) The individuals who are ordering have no idea what calories mean in the context of their day. Is 1500 calories too much for a single meal? What’s the difference between ordering something that’s 400 calories or 1000 calories when it comes to one’s ultimately body weight or health. Because it sounds like the study may have been performed in lower income neighborhoods, this might contribute to the lack of knowledge when it comes to nutrition.

3) The sample size sounds like it was pretty small. Still, it sounds as if 25% of the people actually made better choices – or attempted to. This should be viewed as a positive thing I think…

I’ll have to repost when I take a closer look at this study, as I’m a big believer that being able to compare menu items based on caloric content will help many people who are trying to eat healthier to do so. This means, if someone is “on a diet” this info should really help them — for those who are not trying to lose weight at a given moment, these numbers may be ignored. For some less educated, they may even believe that the higher the caloric content the better for them, who knows?!

Stay tuned!

Update:

Having read over the study, I think that there is probably a bit more of investigation that needs to occur, that actually determines the accuracy of the menu labeling, since the researchers ultimately looked up caloric information from the web sites of these restaurants, instead of from the data provided at the point of purchase. So in some instances, where individuals believed they were ordering less calories, it is entirely possible, that they believed they were, but the labeling didn’t make it clear enough. Additionally, the notion that these consumers believed they were making better choices has been known to cause people to add extras to compensate for their good decisions (sometimes known as the Halo effect). So before we can really draw conclusions, a better designed study is needed (as usually is the case).

Here’s a link to the Study itself.