Hard to Digest
“Legally, you should not be allowed to show a hungover person calorie counts for their recovery McMuffin, it’s inhumane.” Jean Splicer, 2022
As of April, UK restaurant or café chains with over 250 employees must label all menu items with a calorie count, as part of the government’s strategy to “tackle obesity.”
Eating disorder charity BEAT is unequivocal that the new policy is distressing and potentially dangerous for the UK’s 1.25 million (and rising) eating disorder sufferers (roughly two-thirds of whom are women).
But perhaps making eating out distressing for vulnerable people is worth it, if it’s going to curb the ‘obesity epidemic’? After all, calorie labelling on menus has been in place for over a decade in parts of North America — the UK government is surely acting based on the extensive evidence gathered there, right? RIGHT? Erm… no. As pointed out in the excellent Maintenance Phase podcast, calorie labelling on menus is a case of weighing theoretical benefits against real harm.
A 2014 analysis from the US found that simply listing calories (as per the new rule in the UK) has no impact on how many calories were in the food people ordered. Even where extra context or interpretation was given to encourage healthy choices, calories ordered were only reduced by around 80 calories on average. If you eat out once a week, that’s about 11 calories (1 Malteser) per day.
And that’s one of the more positive studies. A 2017 review revealed that while laboratory studies showed a significant (albeit small) reduction in calorie count in food ordered, real-world studies showed no impact whatsoever of calorie labelling. And a 2019 study found that even the small impact found in some studies diminished over time (graph below).
The best that can be said for the policy is that it might lead restaurants to offer more low-calorie options, but even there the evidence is mixed.
Decades of healthy eating messages mean most of us know that chips are higher in calories than salad, but the evidence suggests you’re going to order the chips anyway. All the calorie counts will do is make you feel guilty about it.
A cynical person might think that’s the point – that calorie labelling is another way to frame fatness as a failure of self-control, absolving governments from taking more expensive and effective measures to improve population health, like saving school playing fields, funding NHS weight loss services, or reducing poverty.
If you are worried about eating out under the new rules, there’s advice here.