Does Counting Calories Count?
If you live in New York City or one of the major metro areas that have legislation requiring fast-food and chain restaurants to post calorie counts on their menu, then you might have experienced sticker shock when ordering your favorite morning bagel or a seemingly healthy salad.
There goes a saying “ignorance is bliss” but that certainly doesn’t apply to ignorance over the food we put in our bodies. I’ve always been calorie-conscious: from reading the nutrition label on the back of my friends’ bags of Doritos in seventh grade to refusing certain types of salad dressings in college because you could practically see the globs of fat setting in the containers of Ranch and Blue Cheese. Yet, when I want a really good cookie, I’ll eat it whether it has 40 calories or 400 calories (but if it’s the latter, I’ll just eat one).
Apparently, I’m with the minority. According to a recent study reported in USA Today about calorie count on fast-food restaurant menus, “People who used the calorie information available at fast-food chain restaurants in New York City bought 106 fewer calories’ worth of food at lunch than those who didn’t see or use the information.”
Other findings from the study, funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the city of New York, included:
- 15% of customers say they used the calorie information at lunch; 56% say they saw it.
- Those who used the information purchased an average of 754 calories’ worth of food at lunch in 2009; those who didn’t see or use the information bought 860 calories’ worth of food.
- Those who saw and used the information consumed 152 fewer calories at hamburger chains and 73 fewer calories at sandwich chains compared with everyone else.
When you go to restaurants that post the calorie counts on menus, does it affect your order? Do you choose lower-calorie items when they’re available, or do you eat what you crave?
