Calorie counts on chain restaurant menus were created to help health-conscious consumers — you know, the type who cares already about eating right — more to make informed choices when eating out.
The information is not intended or realistic, is expected to save America from the clutches of a vegetated obesity epidemic.
So recent studies showing that nutrition labels have minimal impact on certain population groups must be greeted with a gaping yawn. The demographics studied — namely low-income children and adults — historically enjoy eating habits that have proven particularly resistance to change.
In fact, the only surprising thing about such studies that everyone would find their results surprising.
Take the study led by Brian Elbel, Assistant professor of medicine and health policy at New York University School of Medicine, and published last month in the International Journal of obesity. Elbel examined the purchases of 349 customers — children age 17 and younger, usually accompanied by their parents — frequenting Burger King, Wendy 's, McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in poor neighborhoods in Newark, N.J., and New York City. He collected his information is required both before the city calorie counts on menus and after 2008 mandate of the law.
The results: more than half of the adolescents and adults said they noticed the calorie information, but only 9% of adolescents and 16 percent of adults to make choices for their children said that it was important in their purchases, according to a USA Today story.
This modest numbers are about everything that you can expect to see in fast food joints.
If you're going to eat a Big Mac and Super-Size-me fries, or a bucket of Extra-Crispy dark-meat chicken from KFC, either you know all the food — as delicious as it may be — is unhealthy and not care, or you do not want to know. Thus it all out in black and white is going to be a limited impact.
That said, I'm impressed that one of the six adults — and one in 11 adolescents — the influential information found. Because let's face it, people who often fast food restaurants are not generally looking for nutritious food. They're looking for something quick, easy — and inexpensive.
This is particularly important in neighborhoods with fewer resources to eat healthy on a daily basis. The occasional trip to Wendy's is probably a healthy meal in the schema, no matter how informative that calorie counts are not.
Elbel himself noted in the USA Today article that it was "harder to see that an effect on these groups because they also choose based on availability and price of food." He said that he specifically targeted low-income neighborhoods because this demographic at greater risk of obesity, and fast-food chains tend to their restaurant of choice.
But don't expect something as simple as menu calorie counts to have no meaningful influence on such entrenched eating habits reveals more of wishful thinking than realistic prospect.
That does not mean that nutrition labels are not important. Many people, me included, struggling to stay on a healthy eating plan, and eating out could be the biggest foil to a well choreographed strategy.
Even choosing a "healthy" entrée as Applebee's Oriental chicken salad can mean more than half of an average person intake recommended daily calorie intake. In such cases, can dig the diet help a prone dinner choose not just for the taste, but for health. That makes for a more informed, better educated consumer.
And I suspect, empowerment of an educated consumer is what the architects of the health care reform had in mind when they mandated that all chain restaurants with 20 or more locations calorie counts post on menus from the first of this year.
As for making a dent in the rate of obesity, which is a more complex challenge that a more comprehensive approach will take. Elbel says that such a strategy should include questions restaurant owners to reformulate their menus, and there are many who would agree with him.
Personally, I feel that such a recommendation goes too far on the road to a nanny state. Give consumers more choices. Tell them what their choices mean for their health. And above all, healthy choices more available and affordable. Then, out of the way.
At the end of the day is good nutrition a personal decision. And Americans should be free to make choices their however they see fit. If it's a juicy, fattening, artery-clogging Whopper with cheese, so it — or dinner is obesity, or splurging on a rare treat. That is what freedom is all about.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar