Effect of Menu Labeling on Caloric Intake and Restaurant Revenue in Full-Service Restaurants

Brenna Ellison, Jayson Lusk and David W. Davis

No 123325, 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: In an effort to help Americans make healthier food choices, U.S. lawmakers recently mandated certain restaurants to add calorie labels to their menus. In this study, we implement the same numeric calorie labels in two different full service restaurants using two different experimental designs. Ultimately, both field experiments lead us to the same conclusion: the numeric calorie label (as currently proposed by the FDA) had little effect on total caloric intake. Our results do reveal, however, that the effectiveness of the numeric label could be enhanced with the addition of a traffic light symbol identifying low-, medium-, and high-calorie items.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Institutional and Behavioral Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea12:123325

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.123325

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