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THURSDAY, Oct. 31, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Implementation of calorie labeling in a large franchise of fast food restaurants was associated with a small decrease in mean calories per transaction, according to a study published online Oct. 30 in The BMJ<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Joshua Petimar, Sc.D., from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues conducted a quasi-experimental longitudinal study involving 104 restaurants with calorie information added to in-store and drive-through menus in April 2017. The overall level and trend changes in mean purchased calories per transaction were compared during the pre-labeling (April 2015 to 2017) and post-labeling (April 2017 to April 2018) implementation periods.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that a level decrease of 60 calories\/transaction was observed after labeling implementation, followed by an increasing trend of 0.71 calories\/transaction\/week during the year after implementation, regardless of the baseline trend. In sensitivity analyses, these results were generally robust to different analytic assumptions. A stronger level decrease and a stronger postimplementation trend change were seen for sides compared with entrees or sugar-sweetened beverages. The postimplementation trend in calories\/transaction was higher in low- versus high-income census tracts (change of 0.94 [95 percent confidence interval, 0.67 to 1.21] versus 0.50 [95 percent confidence interval, 0.19 to 0.81] calories\/transaction\/week); the level decrease was similar between census tracts with higher and lower median income.<\/p>\n
“These results imply that calorie labeling alone may not be enough to make sustainable reductions in calorie intake in fast food restaurants,” the authors write.<\/p>\n
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