Do Consumers Use Calorie Labels?
By: University of Vermont on Jun 23 2006 08:59:21
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Nutritional information
"Americans are now officially supersized," said a recent New York Times editorial, citing increasingly ponderous figures on obesity. Nearly two-thirds of adults and millions of children are packing pounds that put their health at risk.
Among the ideas for reversing this trend was a call for nutrition labeling in fast food and other chain restaurants. But will it help?
That's the question driving a new study led by Rebecca Krukowski, doctoral student in psychology, that will be published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association in June. The answers aren't encouraging. Significant numbers of people surveyed indicated that they lacked either the knowledge or inclination to effectively use labels in restaurants.
"We were kind of surprised at our results," says Krukowski, who co-authored the paper with Jean Harvey-Berino, Jane Kolodinsky, Rashmi Narsana and Thomas DeSisto. "It appears that a large portion of the population isn't interested in having (nutritional information)."
That Americans might benefit from acting upon such data is clear. Thirty-seven percent of adults in a large representative sample reported eating at a fast-food restaurant at least once during a two-day period. According to a report by the FDA Working Group on Obesity, Americans spend nearly half of their food budget outside the home - and that food is higher per meal in calories, total fat and saturated fat.
Even if people read labels, they can't affect food choices that contribute to obesity unless consumers read them and have a basic understanding of how the calories in, say, a Texas Double Whopper would fit into their total day's caloric allotment for maintaining weight (the Texas-sized burger, before fries, has 1050 calories, between 42 and 75 percent of peoples' daily allotment).
Weighing responsibility
In two separate but similar telephone surveys, researchers asked 649 Vermont "community" participants (as part of the 2004 Food and Agriculture survey by the Center for Rural Studies) and 316 Vermont college students a series of questions to determine whether they can reasonably estimate their calorie requirements, whether they read existing food labels and, if so, what information they are looking for, as well as whether they desire caloric information on foods served in restaurants.
Overall, one-third of all participants were unable to accurately target their daily calorie needs, based on an expansive definition of 1500-2500 kcals. There was a significant gender difference in the college sample, however - college women (80.9 percent) were much more accurate than the other three groups.
In terms of label reading, about half of the college students and a third of the community sample reported that they do not generally look at food labels. When asked about what information is used when they do read labels, even fewer people were found to consistently examine two pieces of data that work together in weight control: calories and serving size. In the community sample, 31 percent of participants looked at calories but only 5 percent looked at serving size; in the college sample, 56 percent looked at calories, 12 percent at serving size.
If nutrition labels in restaurants were available, 57 percent of the community sample and 44 percent of the college sample say they would not use the information, though, again, a significantly greater proportion of women in both samples reported that they would use restaurant food labels to look for low calorie foods as compared to men.
Whether consumers want them or not, food labels could become a reality - the Menu Education and Labeling Act, which would require restaurant chains with 20 or more outlets to post calorie and other nutritional information adjacent to each food item, was introduced in the House of Representatives in 2003. While the bill simmers in committee, experts and advocates debate the merits of legislating labels.
For many, it's a no-brainer. It's about consumers' right to know what's in their food. Krukowski's conclusion from the study is that greater access to information is a net positive, but more work is needed.
"We first need an education campaign designed to teach appropriate calorie intake and food label reading skills," she says. Another approach suggested in the study is to develop definitions for "low," "moderate" and "high" calorie foods, similar to the designation now used for "low fat."
But Jean Harvey-Berino, associate professor and chair of the department of nutrition and food sciences, worries that the focus on labels is well-meaning but misdirected. To say the food industry should label their high-calorie, high-fat offerings is letting them off too easy. She'd like to teach people to make better choices, but she'd rather see a better Big Mac.
"Our culture is a landmine of food and it's immediately gratifying," says Harvey-Berino. "American culture is about eating quickly and eating as much as you can get for as small amount of money as you can. People who don't are part of the counterculture…I'd like to see an environmental change first instead of pounding the drum about personal responsibility. I just think it's too hard."
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