摘要：The US Food and Drug Administration’s forthcoming national menu labeling regulations are designed to help curb the national obesity epidemic by requiring calorie counts on restaurants’ menus. However, posted calories can be easily ignored or misunderstood by consumers and fail to accurately describe the healthiness of foods. We propose supplemental models that include nutritional information (e.g., fat, salt, sugar) or specific guidance (e.g., “heart-healthy” graphics). The goal is to empower restaurant patrons with better data to make healthier choices, and ultimately to reduce obesity prevalence. Forthcoming national menu labeling regulations from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 1 will equip Americans with new information to help guide their menu choices when they eat out. Based on requirements already in place in New York City (2008); Seattle–King County, Washington (2009); California (2009); Massachusetts (2009); and other jurisdictions, the FDA’s regulations will require chain restaurants nationwide to post caloric information on menus and menu boards. Although some restaurants already voluntarily provide such information via printed or electronic media, many of these resources are confusing, inaccessible, and largely ineffective. 2 Lacking data at the point of sale in most cases, Americans largely order “in the dark” without actual knowledge of the calorie content or other nutritional facts about their restaurant meals. The overriding public health goal of menu labeling is to help people make healthier choices, consume fewer calories, lower their weights, and improve their health outcomes. Combined with increased physical activity and other measures, reductions in daily caloric intake are a central strategy in addressing the obesity epidemic nationally. Posting calories on restaurant offerings, much like those provided on packaged foods since 1968, 3,4 may lead restaurant patrons to choose lower-calorie foods. Some data suggest that current menu labeling positively alters consumer habits and vendor practices. A New York City study in 2007, for example, found that Subway restaurant patrons who saw posted calorie information purchased on average 52 fewer calories per order than those who did not. 5 Calorie postings on menus may also increase transparency and heighten restaurants’ accountability for the foods they serve. 6 Not surprisingly, menu labeling has strong support from federal, state, and local public health advocates. Even the National Restaurant Association and many larger restaurants endorse forthcoming federal requirements, although largely because of the regulations’ preemptive effect on divergent state and local menu-labeling practices. 7 In principle, national menu labeling should work. In reality, however, it may not. Americans’ appetite for fast food coupled with sophisticated industry practices to design and market inexpensive, oversized portions loaded with unhealthy fats, salt, and sugars may undermine its positive effects. Lacking necessary data to make informed decisions against a constant marketing barrage of oversized, cheap, and easy restaurant meals, many individuals may still consume far more calories than they intend when they eat out. Some research suggests that menu labeling may have only limited effects on consumers’ behaviors, especially among adolescent or lower-income consumers who comprise a large part of the fast food market and tend to order on the basis of taste and price, not calories. 8 Consumers may simply look past or ignore calorie information or fail to understand the nutritional meaning of calorie data. Within a social and economic environment that increasingly promotes the consumption of unhealthy foods, providing restaurant patrons with enhanced information to make nutritional decisions is paramount.
