I walked into a Starbucks in Manhattan the other day and noticed that the food in the glass display case now lists three key facts: the name of the item, the price, and the calories. This last fact is new. It is the result of a recent New York City regulation that requires chain restaurants — those with 15 or more outlets in the city — to list caloric information.
Starbucks had a nice-looking (and huge!) apple fritter in the glass case that went for 490 calories. A slice of pound cake was just a bit less; I think the bagel cost 220 calories. When I asked the clerk about the new calorie info, she told me the signs had just gone up a few days earlier. I asked if she’d seen any changes. She wasn’t sure, she said, but she thought there was a bit less demand on the high-calorie items. A few days later, the Times published an article on the subject.
It struck me that this new regulation presents a great opportunity for obesity researchers. If you could get good data, I’m guessing we could learn a lot about how a posted calorie count affects eating behavior, with all sorts of wrinkles:
+ How calorie-sensitive are people in general, and are they more so during different times of day, days of the week, or types of days (holiday vs. workday, bad weather vs. good, etc.)?
+ If a posted calorie count does shock people into buying/eating differently, how long does that shock last?
+ There’s also a lot of experimentation to be done, including: altering the size of the calorie count on the signs and/or perhaps using different icons (smiley faces?) to differentiate between high-, medium-, and low-calorie foods. You could, of course, also experiment with using images like an obese person vs. a skinny person, or perhaps just a blob of fake fat to represent high-cal., but since we are talking about companies that sell food, I doubt they’d be interested. Maybe Brian Wansink would be, however.
It would also be interesting to see how calorie signs affect demand for lower-calorie foods. While on the surface, the New York City regulation might seem like bad news for restaurants, I could imagine it turning out to be good news if it stokes such demand.
Imagine that Starbucks figures out that most customers don’t want to buy any single piece of food that has more than 250 calories. No one is buying that delicious 490-calorie apple fritter any more (which, for the sake of argument, we’ll say costs $3). What if Starbucks cuts the portion size by 50 percent but sells the new fritter for 80 percent of the original price — i.e., a 245-cal. fritter for $2.40.
That means Starbucks is taking in $4.80 for every 500 calories of apple fritter it sells, versus just $3 in the old days. You might think that $2.40 is a lot for a half-size fritter — but if people turn out to be more calorie-sensitive than they are price-sensitive, Starbucks and a lot of other restaurants may be end up celebrating the day that New York City tried to rein them in.
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I suspect the caloric information would have a smaller impact than fat information. If you knew that the apple fritter had 10g of saturated fat would you still buy it? What if they also posted that 10g of saturated fat was 50% of your alloted daily value?
Posting calories…paternal libertarian nudge?
How about overstating the caloric content to further nudge? Who’s checking the checkers?
i doubt the fat thing would work — people that know a lot about nutrition are not going to be buying an apple fritter from starbucks to begin with.
most people still generalize with calories, which, for someone that doesn’t know much about nutrition, is a decent start. Really they should post calories, total fat, sat. fat, carbs, fiber, and protein. that would be sufficient.
They’ve been doing this for just about every pre-packaged food for as long as I can remember. It seems like there should be plenty of data already for anyone who is interested.
“those with 15 or more outlets in the city”
So this law assumes every store with less than 15 outlets is inherently nutritious? Or is this just pandering to “It’s those big businesses that are fattening us, it’s not OUR fault! A law must be passed!”
I am a pretty slim person and taste was the only thing that ever concerned me when it came to food. For that reason, I never knew what anything on the nurtitional labels meant and fast food was a major part of my diet. However, I recently moved in with a roommate who constantly annoys me by asking if I knew how many calories was in whatever food I was eating at the time. I eventually decided to look up what this whole calorie thing was about. Now that I have an idea of what I should be eating, I find myself constantly paying attention to how many calories I am eating/how many calories I burn. I still regret the decision to look up what calories meant. Ignorance is bliss.
After that long story, I’d have to say I agree that there is great opportunity in posting the nutritional information of food, especially if it creates more demand for low calorie foods that happen to have a higher margin for whatever reason.
I think it’s great that Starbucks is posting the nutritional information of their food. I am quite aware that Starbucks’ bakery products are not diet-friendly, however in a rush or on vacation, sometimes it is my only option. Now I can at least make the smartest choice of what is in front of me!
Do these restaurants also have to provide caloric values for the beverages they offer? What happens when someone wants a decaf mocha reduced fat soy latte? Can a customer request the caloric value of any orderable item?