New York City has the most “progressive” laws on the books for labelling fast food menu items. The intent was to ensure that customers would be aware of the calorie and nutrition values of food before ordering, with the hope being that people would deny their tastebuds and order less fattening foods. A recent study found — to nobody’s surprise — that this hasn’t been working:
A study of New York City’s pioneering law on posting calories in restaurant chains suggests that when it comes to deciding what to order, people’s stomachs are more powerful than their brains.
The study, by several professors at New York University and Yale, tracked customers at four fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken — in poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.
It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.
But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.
The laws were changed because paternalists in power thought that consumers were being gulled against their better instincts, and that merely pointing out the information in a hard-to-miss fashion would assist these poor, weak-willed eaters to trim back on calories and fat. It doesn’t work because people like eating food that’s calorie-rich and fattening. You’re not going to change that without instituting literal rationing: and don’t think they haven’t considered it.
