My newest Examiner post covers the FDA’s draft rules for calorie labeling, which may extend not just to restaurants, but also to convenience stores, movie theaters, and supermarket salad bars — all without much evidence that they’ll do any good.
On a related note, last summer I wrote about how technological change will make these laws superfluous:
Improvements in information technology are another reason to doubt the merits of forcing restaurants to post calories directly on menus. Websites like Calorie Lab already provide databases of the nutritional information from more than 500 restaurants. As far as I know they don’t have a phone app yet, but they could easily make one (one competitor already has). As smart phones proliferate it will be easier than ever for consumers to access calorie counts in addition to much more thorough nutritional information about the foods they eat. Yet these archaic laws will still be on the books forcing unneeded clutter on printed menus.
Even better than smart phones, this week Eater takes a look at how iPads are replacing printed menus in a few restaurants. The devices are durable, interactive, can hold a lot more information than a printed menu, and can work with a restaurant’s point of sale system. If desired, an electronic menu could offer extensive nutritional information at the push of a button. They’re cost-prohibitive right now for most restaurants, but in the future we can expect the price to go down and electronic menus to become more common.
It will be interesting to see how the law is adapted for electronic menus. Will calorie counts have to be displayed prominently like they are now, or will it be enough to have them easily available on the device for interested consumers? If the former, that will be another sign this law is intended more to nag people than to provide them with desired information.
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Ryan Sager* is skeptical that the federal calorie label mandate will be effective:
One of the main findings of research into how and why we eat is that we’re very good at coming up with excuses to eat more. Exercised today? You’re entitled to another helping of cake. The food you’re eating is labeled “low fat”? Time to wolf down 10 more of whatever it is. Your favorite fast-food place has introduced a salad? A study last year in the Journal of Consumer Research showed that when you see a salad on the menu, you give yourself license to get something more indulgent.
If you were “good” at Starbucks, in other words, you’ll probably be “bad” later. Our brains find calories rewarding. And we like to do rewarding things.
There’s additional suggestive evidence for this in a Yale study from late last year that found that test subjects who reduced their calories at one meal completely compensated later in the day. The compensation effect disappeared when menus included a disclaimer that the average adult should only consume 2,000 calories per day, which the new law also requires restaurants to post on menus. However this study tracked only one day of consumption and took place in a highly contrived environment. I expect that over repeated visits to real chain restaurants this disclaimer will lose salience, so it will be interesting to see if follow-up studies of actual consumers bear this out.
Also of interest is a video from Hot Air interviewing the owner of a small Minnesota restaurant chain. The editing is overly anti-Obama and Pelosi at times — the calorie labeling aspect of health care reform had bipartisan support — but it does provide some insight into how this law will be an expensive hassle for mid-sized businesses.
[Hat tips to Reason and Bunkerville.]
*Corrected.
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A reader responds to my Washington Examiner column about mandated calorie labeling:
Jacob Grier’s concerns hardly amount to a hill of beans. What, precisely, is so prohibitively expensive about publishing simple calorie counts for the ingredients that restaurants use all of the time? (I would like to see fat and carb grams, too, but I suppose that’s too much to ask.) Restaurants spend far more money on less important things, like interior design and mints.
The cost of accurately measuring the number of calories can be hundreds of dollars per dish. For a large chain this isn’t a great burden, but for smaller chains this is significant. Recall the local NY pizza chain that spent $10,000 testing its pizzas just to get measurements of dubious precision. Add into this the costs of creating new menus and menu boards at all locations.
The costs will be high for vending machine operators as well. From McClatchy:
At the National Automatic Merchandising Association, which represents the vending industry, Ned Monroe, senior vice president for government affairs, said that while “we’re not opposed to calorie disclosure, we do have other concerns.”
Among them are potential legal problems _for instance, what if someone attached the wrong label to a vending machine product? He also called the provisions costly.
“The vending industry is under severe economic strain,” he said, and the one-year cost to achieve labeling is an estimated $56.4 million. About 7.5 million vending machines would need product labels, a task that’s generally done by a senior route driver.
Will the gains be worth these expenditures? Cost-benefit analysis is not a strength of calorie labeling studies, but I am skeptical given how ineffective labeling appears to be so far.
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Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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