Putting Wellness on the Menu

You don’t have to be a nutritionist to understand that the choices Americans make when they eat out are likely to affect their health. After all, food consumed away from home accounted for 42% of U.S. households’ food expenditures in 2009, according to estimates from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS). ERS research, reported in the March 2011 issue of Amber Waves, a USDA publication, also shows that away-from-home meals and snacks tend to be of lower nutritional quality and higher in calories than home-prepared offerings. Specifically, a 2010 ERS analysis demonstrates that each additional away-from-home meal that is consumed increases total caloric intake for adults by 134 calories/day—a total that could result in weight gain of two pounds annually if other factors including amount of physical activity remain constant.

In this context, data from a new NPD Group study provides some encouraging news. According to the study, consumers want to eat well when they dine out because they would like to feel healthier. One key point that the report, Consumers Define Healthy Eating When They Go Out to Eat, makes is that calorie counting isn’t a priority among restaurant goers. Instead, those who are seeking healthy options are most concerned about the quality of the meal—whether it is fresh and natural and features nutritious ingredients.

“Typically, the perception has been that healthy eating to consumers means low-calorie and low-fat, and our findings show that the perception is not the reality,” says Bonnie Riggs, NPD Restaurant Industry Analyst. “Clearly, descriptors like fresh or natural will resonate more with consumers than less calories.

“Understanding these trends provides foodservice operators and manufacturers with the opportunity to offer products that meet consumers’ needs for healthier options,” Riggs continues. “More consumers are seeking healthy/light foods, and having these options available on menus will meet these consumers’ needs; however, healthful menu options must be fresh, taste good, and be affordably priced.”

By contrast, more than two-thirds of U.S. consumers polled for a World Menu Report sponsored by Unilever Food Solutions said they would like to see information on fat and calorie content on the menu when dining out. And 64% of survey respondents claimed that they would choose healthier meals if more information was provided.

In fact, it won’t be long before patrons of many U.S. chain restaurants will be offered more nutritional information. U.S. healthcare reform legislation passed last spring includes the requirement that restaurant chains with 20 or more outlets post the calorie content of their menu items. The healthcare act requires the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to issue proposed regulations to implement the new requirements no later than March 23, 2011. Authors of the Amber Waves article report that small-scale studies of the impact of calorie labeling in restaurants suggest that it is too soon to tell what impact it will have on consumers’ purchasing behavior.

Findings from a study of fast-food purchasing behavior in King County in the state of Washington indicate that calorie information doesn’t have an effect on the choices consumers make. The county required restaurant chains with 15 or more locations to post nutrition facts labeling including calorie information beginning in January 2009. Thirteen months into the initiative, researchers from Duke-National University of Singapore (NUS) Graduate Medical School and the local public health department found purchasing patterns at the restaurants with the nutritional data signage were no different than those at restaurants in the chain that did not post the information.

“Given the results of the prior studies, we had expected the results to be small, but we were surprised that we could not detect even the slightest hint of changes in purchasing behavior as a result of the legislation,” reports lead author Eric Finkelstein, Associate Professor of Health Services at Duke-NUS. “The results suggest that mandatory menu labeling, unless combined with other interventions, may be unlikely to significantly influence the obesity epidemic.”