Providing calorie information on fast-food restaurant menu boards: consumer views

Abstract

Purpose: To gather consumer input about approaches to providing energy composition information for foods on fast-food restaurant menus.

Design: We asked a subset of individuals (n = 150) in an experimental study about the influence of nutrition labeling on fast-food meal choices to evaluate calorie information on mock fast-food menus in various formats.

Setting: Three community sites in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan area.

Subjects: Adolescents and adults who ate fast food at least once per week were recruited.

Measures: Via a series of open- and close-ended questions, participants gave feedback about several formats for providing energy composition information for foods on fast-food restaurant menus.

Analysis: Means and frequencies were calculated, and chi2 tests were conducted.

Results: When asked to compare a menu that provided calorie information for each menu item with a menu that provided the number of minutes of running that would be required to burn the calories contained in each menu item, 71.0% of participants preferred the calorie information over the physical activity information. Participants also compared two approaches to providing caloric reference information on the menu (average daily calorie needs per day vs. per meal), and 61.3% preferred the calorie needs-per-meal format.

Conclusion: Our results may be useful in designing approaches to providing energy composition information for foods on fast-food restaurant menus.

Figures

Figure 1

Reference Boxes Included in the Bottom Right-Hand Corner of Each Sample Fast-Food Menu Board That Included Food Items, Calories (Menu Boards One and Two) or Minutes Running (Menu Board Three), and Price