Abstract
The Food and Drug Administration’s menu labeling rule requires chain restaurants to prominently display calories, while leaving other nutritional information (e.g., fat, sodium, sugar) to the request of consumers. We use rich micronutrient data from 257 large chain brands and 24,076 menu items to examine whether calories are correlated with widely used “nutrient profile” scores that measure healthfulness based on nutrient density. We show that calories are indeed statistically significant predictors of nutrient density. However, as a substantive matter, the correlation is highly attenuated (partial R2 < 0.01). Our findings (a) suggest that the promise of calorie labeling to improve nutrient intake quality at restaurants is limited and (b) clarify the basis for transparency of nutrient composition beyond calories to promote healthy menu choices.
Highlights
Pursuant to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandated menu labeling at chain restaurants with over 20 locations starting in May of 2018
We model the nutrient profile score (RRR or Nutrient Rich Foods” (NRF)) as a function of calories for all items, and assess robustness using a series of fixed effects regressions
Our study clarifies the rationale for calorie disclosure
Summary
Pursuant to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandated menu labeling at chain restaurants with over 20 locations starting in May of 2018. The FDA itself has contemplated deploying such nutrient density indices to indicate healthy choices, but has acknowledged that “there is a need for research to determine the best way(s) to present nutrient content information to consumers so that they will make healthier choices when eating food away from home” [6] These nutrient profiling methods have been proposed, promoted, and deployed across a wide range of jurisdictions to classify healthy / nutritious foods for regulatory purposes, such as setting school food standards and food tax and subsidy programs [44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51].
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