Studies show calorie postings affect consumer choices, not bottom line

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I have been saying this for a while. Posting nutrition information is good for consumers and business.

From QSRweb.com: Studies show calorie postings affect consumer choices, not bottom line: A recent Ohio State University study provides more evidence that consumers do pay attention to calorie counts of meals when they are provided conveniently.

The study collected data about choices consumers made among 12 entrees offered at a university dining center that operates much like a QSR. Researchers found that when nutrition information was provided at the point-of-purchase, sales of high-calorie entrees dramatically decreased, while sales of lower-calorie items substantially increased. After the nutrition information was removed, sales of the higher-calorie items gradually increased again.

Of significance to operators, sales did not decline during the study, said Gail Kaye, one of the study's authors. The revenue per entree sold remained consistent before, during and after the nutrition information was offered. This finding could help reduce qualms of restaurants hesitant to offer calorie information to consumers for fear that sales would decrease.

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Companies can't count calories

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Everyday I read that Americans want government out of their lives.

But what happens when there is no accounting, no rules, and no laws.

Here's a very small, almost minuscule problem that happens when there is self-regulation, only business oversight, and buyer-beware companies: they cheat.

How would you feel if everytime -- that's everytime -- you went to fill up with gas, Citgo or Mobil gave you just 72% of a gallon for a gallon you paid for? What if Shell gave you just 50% of a gallon? How would you act if the butcher charged you full price on just 75% of a pound.

I believe Americans would be outraged. But that's happening everyday in fast-food restaurants throughout the U.S.

According to new study from the American Dietetic Association, some restaurant foods contained up to 200% of stated values and, in addition, free side dishes sometimes are an average of 245% of stated values for the entrees they accompanied. And restaurants are not alone. Supermarket packaged foods under report calories.

According to the FDA, packaged foods are allowed a 20% margin of error. Therefore, a 300 calorie sandwich may contain anywhere from 270 to 330 calories. (Amazingly, there was very little over-estimating of calories.)

These findings suggest that stated energy contents of reduced-energy meals obtained from restaurants and supermarkets are not consistently accurate, and in this study averaged more than measured values, especially when free side dishes were taken into account. If widespread, this phenomenon could hamper efforts to self-monitor energy intake to control weight, and could also reduce the potential benefit of recent policy initiatives to disseminate information on food energy content at the point of purchase.

FoodNavigator.com reports: "Restaurant meals tested were even less accurate. Of 29 quick-serve and sit-down restaurant meals analyzed, calorie content averaged 18 percent more than stated. There is no FDA-regulated limit for the amount by which a restaurant meal may exceed stated calorie content, the researchers wrote."

Where's the outrage? Or are we all so cynical we know companies cheat.

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1977 Gov't report: Eat food. Not too much. But it never happened!

In the New York Times Sunday magazine's cover story, Unhappy Meals, Michael Pollin lays out at length what happened with our food as scientists, nutritionists, the government and even journalists got involved. Pollin's conclusion: everything about food is extremely confusing. But what is not confusing, is that we should be eating less than we currently are eating.

If you care at all, in what you eat everyday, you should not miss this article.

A couple of facts jumped out at me:

In 1977, a Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, headed by George McGovern drafted a recommendation advising Americans to actually reduce consumption of meat and dairy. But after outrage by beef and dairy industries plain talk was replaced by confusing: “Choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake.” The new language exonerates the foods themselves; now the culprit is an obscure, invisible, tasteless — and politically unconnected — substance that may or may not lurk in them called “saturated fat.”

Instead — 30 years later — we have an obesity epidemic.

We produce 3,900 calories in total food calories every day for each American, but the average number of those calories Americans own up to eating is only 2,000.

Not only are we eating twice as much than what we need, but we lie about as well.

In plain talk, we're big fat liers.

And we seem to jump from one food fad to another.

Of course it’s also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness.

In Pollin's final analysis he gives us a few rules of thumb, one of which is:

Pay more, eat less. The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There’s no escaping the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is shameful, but most of us can: Americans spend, on average, less than 10 percent of their income on food, down from 24 percent in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation.

“Eat less” is the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we currently do is compelling. “Calorie restriction” has repeatedly been shown to slow aging in animals, and many researchers (including Walter Willett, the Harvard epidemiologist) believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention.

Eat less everywhere, at home, on the road, in restaurants.