Published 13 October 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4198
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4198

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Calorie counts on menus do not reduce diners’ energy intake, study finds

Janice Hopkins Tanne

1 New York

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In January 2008, despite protests by the restaurant trade, New York city’s health department demanded that chain restaurants post the calorie counts of their meals on menus, on boards on restaurant walls, and on labels in display cases. The idea was that consumers would look at the calorie count, think twice, and order something lower in calories.

But a study looking at the effects showed that customers in the fast food restaurants that had introduced the calorie labelling ordered food with the same or higher calorie count as meals chosen by diners in Newark in neighbouring New Jersey, where labelling had not been introduced (Health Affairs, doi:10.1377/hlthaff.28.6.w1110).

Brian Elbel of New York University Medical Center and colleagues used payment receipts and responses from a short survey of 1156 adults at fast food restaurants in New York and at similar restaurants in similar low income neighbourhoods in . . . [Full text of this article]


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