Adolescent Fast Food Choices in the Era of the Menu Boards with Nutritional Information: A Study to Maximize Effectiveness

Abstract

By 2013, chain fast food restaurants will be required to list nutritional information on menu boards. We hypothesize that consumers will not know how to apply the nutritional information without first learning their estimated calorie needs. To test this, we created a “calorie teaching tool” for the primary care pediatric setting, which estimates caloric requirements by gender and height. We then administered it to a group of adolescent volunteers in a pediatric hospital. Seventy subjects were enrolled, of which 34 received the calorie teaching tool. Within two weeks of the teaching tool being administered, all subjects were given lunch vouchers to a chain fast food restaurant within the hospital that lists nutritional information on the menu board. Seventy-four percent of subjects who received the teaching tool accurately reported their estimated daily caloric needs, compared to 31% of control subjects (p 0.001). However, our findings suggest that adolescentsmay not have reviewed themenuboard’s nutritional information, as subjects in both groups did not accurately report the caloric content of the meal they ordered. Subsequently, the total calories ordered between the experimental (mean 1071 185) and control (mean 1060 295) groups were not significantly different. We propose that at least two things must occur for consumers to use menuboardnutritional information effectively: (1) theymust learn their daily caloric requirements, which the “calorie teaching tool” imparts effectively; and (2) they must then look at the new menu boards with nutritional information, to balance the number of calories they requirewith their food choices.