Can Calorie Labeling on Fast Food Menus Help Boost Children's Physical Activity?
Last fall, the Food and Drug Administration released new rules requiring restaurants with 20 or more locations to begin posting calorie information for standard menu items, per a section
Can Calorie Labeling on Fast Food Menus Help Boost Children's Physical Activity?
Last fall, the Food and Drug Administration released new rules requiring restaurants with 20 or more locations to begin posting calorie information for standard menu items, per a section of the Affordable Care Act. However, certain other types of calorie labeling could help boost physical activity among youths, suggests a study published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
The study authors surveyed 823 parents of children ages 2-17, presenting them with one of four types of hypothetical fast food menus: no label, labels containing calorie information only, labels with calories and the number of walking minutes needed to burn said calories, or labels with calories and the number of walking miles needed to burn the calories. The parents were asked to imagine they were placing an order for their child using whichever menu they received. At the end of the survey, they were asked to rate how much each type of menu label would influence their ordering and their potential to motivate their child to exercise.
Among the 189 parents who had no label on their menu, they ordered an average of 1,294 calories for their child, while the remaining 600-plus parents with one of the other three types of labels ordered roughly 200 calories fewer. There was no statistically significant difference between the other three label groups in terms of the amount of calories ordered.
Of the 823 parents in the survey, 30 percent said calories-only labeling would be "very likely" to influence their fast food selection for their child, while labels with any physical-activity component—dubbed physical activity calorie expenditure (PACE) labels—earned even higher marks from parents. Health literacy status also played a role in parents' understanding of labeling—just under 60 percent of parents with low or marginal health literacy said any type of labeling would be at least somewhat likely to influence their food choice, while nearly 70 percent of those with adequate health literacy said the same about any of the three types o