Strengths and limitations
eating disorders
SHOP
This study was pre-registered and was stratified to represent the UK population in terms of gender and education. While virtual methodologies for food ordering are widely used [As is standard practice in eating behaviour research, individuals who were currently dieting, fasting, or had a history of eating disorders we ineligible to take part in this study, and so our findings are not generalisable to these groups. Some previous research has found interactions of calorie labelling with ethnicity [For two of the three outlets, participants had the option to order additional sides, but for the third outlet (a coffee shop) participants were instructed to only order a drink to ensure participant’s focus was on beverage choice per se, rather than considering the beverage as a side option to a food purchase. As we found some evidence in one of the outlets that proportional pricing was associated with increased purchase of side dishes, it is unclear if the same pattern of results would have been observed in the coffee shop outlet. It may be beneficial for future research to consistently include the option of additional sides to be better placed to examine intervention effects on overall diet. Due to the design of the delivery app, participants were required to complete the study on a computer or laptop, but food delivery orders are often made through mobile phones applications. This is shown by the large number of mobile downloads of such apps, for example the UberEats app was downloaded by 3.5 million people in the UK in 2022 alone [Only three outlet types were examined, all of which were large chains. A wider range of food and beverage outlets are available on food delivery apps. It would be particularly beneficial to know whether orders from smaller non-chain businesses (currently exempt from calorie labelling laws in the US and UK [