Food Calorie Counts Will Start Appearing in US Restaurants and Grocery Stores (qz.com)

Americans are about to find it very difficult to avoid knowing how many calories they're consuming every day. From a report: That's because the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week decided to move forward with an Obama-era food labeling rule that requires restaurants, grocery, and convenience stores with 20 or more locations to post calorie counts for standard menu items. The interesting thing about calorie counts is that, while they undoubtedly offer more transparency around the foods we choose to eat, there's not a lot of evidence to show they affect people's purchasing decisions.

In 2017, a team of researchers led by a Harvard University professor conducted a systematic review of 53 studies on the topic. Their work was later published in the journal Obesity, and included an analysis of 18 studies of behavior in real-world restaurants, 9 from in cafeterias, and 21 from simulated settings. Five studies examined restaurant offerings. Overall, the review found that available research lacked strong designs, which ultimately makes understanding the effectiveness of calorie count labeling all the more cloudy.

Comments

Pick your battles

[rmdingler]

The interesting thing about calorie counts is that, while they undoubtedly offer more transparency around the foods we choose to eat, there's not a lot of evidence to show they affect people's purchasing decisions.

There are folks you cannot reach despite all the evidence you can muster... nonetheless, please continue to provide that information for the folks you can.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

100 Calorie Packs

[mentil]

I love those '100 calorie packs'. It makes it easy for me to know I'm eating 500 calories when I eat 5 of them at once, because they're tinier than an infant's hand and fill me up less than a cup of water.
I particularly love bags of popcorn, where it's "only 60 calories per serving!" and each serving is 1 tablespoon. Who eats 1 tablespoon of popcorn in a sitting? How do you even measure pre-popped popcorn in tablespoons?
Europe does this right, food has 'calories per 100g' on every package.
On-topic, restaurant meal quantities vary by cook, with eye-balling of usage of cooking oil and sauce. Also, if you order a dish that comes with rice, chances are you will be given lots of rice and only end up using half of it for that dish, yet the 'total calories' will include the entire container of rice.

Re: Shouldn't last too long.

[swillden]

Gosh, who would have thought that ruling by decree was a bad idea in a democracy? When Obama did it is was for our own good, but when Trump does it he's a nazi tyrant? It's the exact same thing.

Your reading comprehension is poor. The criticism isn't that Trump reversing Obama's directive is bad because Trump is a "nazi tyrant", the criticism is that Trump wants it reversed merely because Obama did it, regardless of its merits. He's a toddler in a nursery who wants a toy merely because another toddler played with it first. I don't know what Trump's motive is for hating Obama so much but his obvious intention to undo anything and everything Obama did, regardless of whether it's good or bad, is just childish and stupid. Or racist.

Though I guess we do have to thank the silly child for highlighting the fact that we've given the executive too much power. One good thing I hope to get out of the Trump administration is that we will we scale back the power of the president. We've trusted the holder of that office far too much, probably mostly because until now the holders of that office have demonstrated themselves to be adequately trustworthy. Lots of us recognized the danger many years ago, but Trump has made it impossible to ignore. I guess maybe we need a really, really terrible president from time to time. It's been almost 200 years since Andrew Jackson so we were overdue (though comparing Jackson to Trump is a little unfair to Jackson).