Will Calorie Labeling at Restaurants Enforce Healthier Meals?
I was reading an article the other day about a study in the UK where they are trying to have their government enforce a policy that restaurant menus would need to have calorie labels for each item. Their thought process is that if people are aware of how many calories they are consuming while eating out, it may entice them to choose healthier meals. While I would love to see calorie labeling rolled out across the globe, I’m honestly not sure how much of a difference it would make. Let me explain.
Eating Behaviors Are Hard to Change
Have you ever tried a diet only to fail miserably? Have you tried making and eating healthier meals in an effort to lose weight? Probably didn’t last too long, right? Well, you’re not alone. The reason many people fail is not only because most diets are not lifestyle diets but also because it’s extremely difficult to change a person’s eating behaviors. Now, I’m not going to say it’s impossible but it’s definitely going to take some time and consistency.
The article I mentioned when opening up this article talked about how restaurant menus that showed the calories tend to have healthier meals to choose from. From my experience here in the states, I don’t find that to be the case. I see various restaurants with calorie labels on their menu yet they aren’t serving healthier meals.
In the article they claimed when looking at UK restaurant menus, those that had calorie labels had “on average 45% less fat and 60% less salt than items from other restaurants.” While that’s fine and dandy, we are also assuming those figures are correct. I hate to be the voice of pessimism but we all know that brands across the globe aren’t exactly labeling their products correctly. So, we are left trusting what the restaurant menus are saying and that we are, indeed, consuming healthier meals.
One researcher did say, “This is the first study to look at differences in the nutritional content of food from restaurants with and without meal labeling in the UK. It suggests that on the whole, restaurants that provide information on calories on menus also serve healthier food, in terms of fat and salt levels. As well as useful information for customers, mandatory menu labeling could also encourage restaurants to improve the nutritional quality of their menus.” Again, I’m not saying it won’t work, I’m just saying I’ll believe it when I see it.
Road to Obesity Doesn’t Start and Stop with Restaurants
Putting calorie labels on restaurant menus is a great idea – assuming the people who open the menu care about the nutritional breakdown of what they are consuming during their restaurant experience. Personally, when I go out to eat, I don’t want the normal stuff I eat at home. If I did, I would have just stayed home. You may share the same sentiment in that when I go out to eat it’s for the experience. It’s for the atmosphere. Maybe you eat something you normally wouldn’t (within reason) or you splurge on a dessert to end the meal? I don’t see ANY restaurant menus being the reason we have an obesity epidemic these days.
Related Article: How to Easily Make Healthier Choices Ordering at Restaurants
Here’s the bottom line and what I’m getting at with the heading above… most people do not eat out every single meal of the day. I would assume at most, people would eat out once a day but even then, most would not find it financially feasible long-term as it’s not cheap.
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