Calorie counts help curb diners’ appetites for less healthy options, but not by much.
The good news: Menu labels including calorie information were shown to reduce the amount people ate. Now, for the bad news: Calorie counts on restaurant menus would, on average, cause a consumer to lose just 1 pound over the span of 3 years, according to a new working paper distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research organization in Cambridge, Mass.
By the time diners reach dessert, they may have ‘decision fatigue.’Calorie counting only reduced the calorie intake by 44.9 calories per meal, or just 3%. What’s more, while diners consumed fewer calories during the appetizer and entrée courses when they had calorie counts, there was no statistically significant difference in the calories consumed with drinks or dessert.
By the time diners reach dessert, they may have “decision fatigue.” They might be so tired of calculating calories that they choose what they’d normally eat, regardless of how healthy it is. After a healthy meal, people may also be more inclined to “splurge” on dessert and drinks.
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Here’s what else they found: Calorie counts make it 1.6% less likely that a patron will order an entrée, but 7.6% more likely that they will have a drink. Eating out at a restaurant with a repeat customer leads consumers to eat 61.5 fewer calories as appetizers, if the menu shows the calorie totals. Reading calorie counts on a notice board or menu makes someone 9.6% more likely to support them.The findings were based on a study of more than 5,000 diners’ habits. Researchers from Cornell University and Louisiana State University ran a real-world experiment in two sit-down college restaurants between November 2015 and September 2017.
At these restaurants, parties were randomly put into two groups — a test group that was given menus with calorie information and a control group whose menus didn’t list calorie counts.
Why calorie counts might not be so usefulData on the influence of calorie counts are mixed, at best. Studies seem to indicate that the type of restaurant makes a big difference as to whether patrons will eat fewer calories after encountering nutritional information on menus. Calorie counts didn’t make a difference at fast-food restaurants, but do appear to change behaviors at establishments like Starbucks SBUX, -0.31%
Ultimately, how much food you order may ultimately depend on how the menu is designed — and not whether it has calorie information. Research has shown that tricks such as flowery language or placement on the page can markedly increase a menu item’s sales.
In particular, research has shown that denoting something as “low calorie” will make a dish more popular, even if it is in fact less healthy than other items on the menu.
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