Good news for McDonald’s and its smaller rivals. People rarely pay attention to labels about calories or other fast-food content that might cause risks to health.
Researchers from New York University show why fast-food menu calorie counts do not help consumers make healthy choices in a new study published in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.
The researchers found that only a small fraction of fast-food eaters – as little as 8 percent – are likely to make healthy choices as a result of current calorie labeling. The study comes less than two months before a federal policy goes into effect requiring calorie labeling nationwide and provides recommendations for improving labeling that could boost the odds of diners making healthy choices.
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But despite the rapid and widespread adoption of policies to require calorie counts at restaurants, most studies of calorie labels in fast-food restaurants in places that have already adopted labeling, including New York, have found little evidence that fast-food consumers are changing their behaviors in response to the labels.
So much for weaning people off 530-calorie Big Macs.
