Eater's Digest: Lamenting restaurant labeling

By Scott Norgaard     3/11/10 6:00pm

The good news is, grocery store consumers are pretty well informed about what is actually in their food. Because most foods on grocery shelves come equipped with nutrition labelsmandated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, one can easily reference the calorie count, sodium and sugar content and other important considerations when purchasing packaged foods.But what about restaurants? According to the National Restaurant Association, Americans spent 26 percent of their wages on eating out in 1970. In 2006, this percentage shot up to 48 percent. And on to the bad news: Nutrition information is not very easily accessible in restaurants. Most are mysterious about the contents of their dishes, leaving customers merely to guess at their nutritional content and value. How much salt is actually in this cheeseburger? What type of oil is used to fry these potatoes?

What if more information were available to the consumer? Would this change consumer behavior?

To tackle these questions, we can look at a piece of legislation that took effect in New York City in May 2008, amending Health Code 81.50. Prompted by consumer demand for calorie counts on menus, the legislation required restaurant chains with 15 or more establishments to prominently publish calorie counts on their menus.The Department of Health's Notice of Adoption of the amendment cited studies showing that between 62 percent to 87 percent of Americans support mandating that restaurants show nutritional data.

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Legislation aside, do these calorie counts actually impact consumer behavior? Is this law really making New Yorkers healthier?

In October 2009, The New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene declared a significant drop in calories purchased in nine out of 13 fast-food chains studied. This data suggests that consumers are reacting to the displayed caloric data and consciously choosing lower-calorie dishes.

However, other studies are not so quick to declare the legislation a success. One Oct. 2009 study conducted by researchers at New York University and Yale University found no change in consumer habits in low-income neighborhoods in their survey of 1,156 adults, comparing their consumption before and after the law's enactment.

Whether mandated to display caloric information or not, restaurants increasingly make claims about the healthiness of their foods. Many restaurants now include healthy eating options or sections featuring "light" dishes, claiming to help conscious eaters.

Though it's tempting to brand the recent trend of increased restaurant health information a success, I am wary of these moves. For one thing, mandating only that restaurant chains display calorie information may mislead consumers about the nutritional value of a meal by effectively reducing the food to a mere calorie count.

Apart from the amount of calories, many other factors influence the healthiness of a food, and mandated calorie counts are not the whole story. They do nothing to show sodium, sugar, or any vitamin or mineral content. The nutritional value of a food cannot be reduced to one number. A diet is more than just the sum of its caloric parts. Restaurants may have an incentive to reduce the calories in their foods, but simply lowering caloric intake may not necessarily make the foods healthier. If chains really want to improve the health of their foods, they could use fresher ingredients, less additives, and less processing.

Consumers must also remain critical of restaurants' voluntary health claims. Restaurants can easily manipulate health claims, trumpeting virtuous-sounding labels like "trans fat free" and other health-themed catchphrases. However, although a food may be free of trans fats, it may not contain a healthy amount of fat overall. While the product may not have one type of fat, it might also be loaded with others. Such healthy-sounding claims may mislead consumers: Perceiving the healthy-sounding foods to be "better" than they really are, people may eat more.

Overall, the best defense for consumers is to be educated and conscious. Mandated calorie count laws are limited in the information they provide, and restaurants' voluntary health information can be misleading. In total, education is the best defense when eating out. Dishes with fresh ingredients, few additives, and little processing are generally going to be better choices than foods that are chemically altered to be low in calories.

Scott Norgaard is a Sid Richardson College freshman.

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