Restaurateurs, take note: Americans are no longer just giving lip service to eating more healthfully — they’re actually doing it.
That’s what the Los Angeles Times said about a recent report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. The report found that Americans are eating less fat and more fiber and reading more food labels than they used to.
The USDA found that the average American was eating 127 fewer calories in restaurants each day, and three fewer meals and 1.5 fewer snacks away from home each month.
But that data doesn’t necessarily jibe with what restaurants are seeing, or with consumption data from NPD, which reports that 3 percent more burgers were sold this year through July 2014 than during the previous year.
So what gives?
For one thing, the USDA's report is about data from 2005-2010, and the three-meal-per-month decline in visits was from 2007 to 2009, a time when the global economic meltdown likely had more of an effect on customers backing away from restaurants than attention to their waistlines.
Still, 42 percent of working-age adults and 57 percent of older adults claim to use “Nutrition Facts” panels most of the time, and 76 percent of working-age adults said they would use the information if it were available.
But other studies say otherwise. In a study from Carnegie Mellon University last year, researchers camped out in one McDonald’s in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn, N.Y., where menu labeling at chain restaurants has been mandatory for several years. The researchers gave some customers a sheet of paper with recommended calories for a single meal, some a sheet with recommended calories per day, and some no information.
The study found that all three groups ordered the same way. However, it didn’t compare how they ordered at restaurants with calorie information on menus compared to those without, which is problematic. But anecdotal evidence across the industry indicates that while calorie information might affect orders in the first couple of weeks, customers tend to settle back to their old habits before long.
Not so fast, says a study from the Drexel University School of Public Health. It found that customers at full-service restaurants with calorie information on menus ordered meals with about 155 fewer calories than those without such information.
They also cut back on sodium and fat.
Still, they ordered on average food and beverages totaling about 1,800 calories for a single meal, just shy of the 2,000 calories recommended for an entire day.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
