Impact of Menu Labeling: People Eat Less When They Know More

The restaurant industry has lobbied hard against mandatory menu labeling in restaurants, highlighting the importance of a new study from the Rudd Center measuring the impact of menu-labeling regulations. The researchers found that calorie labels result in the consumption of significantly fewer calories. The study appears online in the American Journal of Public Health.

Participants in the two groups who saw calorie labels ate 14 percent fewer calories than the group whose participants did not see calorie labels. Furthermore, when after-dinner eating was factored in, people in the group who saw menu labels and recommended calorie guidelines consumed an average of 250 fewer calories than people in the other groups.

"This shows that adding a label about daily caloric needs to menu labeling positively impacts people's food choices, driving them to eat fewer calories,"says lead author Christina Roberto, a Yale PhD student in Clinical Psychology and Epidemiology and Public Health. The other authors were Peter D. Larsen, Henry Agnew, Jenny Baik, and Kelly D. Brownell.