September 8, 2024 — What’s the harm? For many “interventions” to reduce obesity prevalence, this rationale seems to be good enough to spur implementation. Menu labeling is a good example. Restaurants in the U.S. and in numerous other places must publish the number of calories in food portions they sell. This went into effect based upon suppositions. Policy makers […]
April 19, 2023 — Breathtaking. That’s the only word we can find to describe the claims coming from a cost effectiveness study of calorie labeling on restaurant menus for preventing cancer deaths. Published yesterday in BMJ Open, this study is already generating headlines like this one: “Thanks to calorie-counting menus, fewer Americans are dying of obesity-related cancers” Making an […]
December 28, 2022 — If there’s no greater burden than high expectations, then food labels have a big load to carry. We keep expecting them to solve problems of unhealthy diets, obesity, and now perhaps climate change, too. A new study in JAMA Open Networks suggests fast food food menu labels might be an effective tool to help with […]
July 12, 2022 — It seemed like a good idea at the time. Back in 2008, there was a headlong rush to require restaurant menu calorie labeling by decree. New York City tried it first. Other cities and states followed quickly. Tired of fighting it in a dizzying array of local venues, the restaurant industry came on board with […]
December 1, 2015 — Almost eight years ago, the New York Times reported on intense fighting about menu labeling in restaurants. They quoted NYC Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden as comparing questions about the effectiveness of menu labeling to “an argument that the world is flat.” Yesterday, the New York Times headline on the subject was: The Surprising Failure of Calorie Counts […]
November 25, 2014 — FDA will today unveil their final rules for labeling calories everywhere that food is prepared and served away from home. Within a year, you will be seeing calorie counts in restaurants, vending machines, delis, bakeries, pizza joints, and even the prepared food departments in grocery stores. Cranking out these rules has taken almost five years. The […]
November 7, 2014 — We’re having difficulty reading the menu labeling data at ObesityWeek 2014. A study presented in the second annual Obesity journal symposium showed a promising result: a 50% reduction in weight gain over a 36-week academic year when college students were exposed to menu calorie labeling. The lead researcher on this study, Charoula Konstantia Nikolaou, says: […]
August 5, 2014 — It’s pretty common to read headlines about obesity and nutrition studies that have nothing to do with what the studies actually showed. Sadly, we’re used to seeing this a lot. But more commonly than you would think, the conclusion in a study itself is disconnected from the study’s actual findings. Reader beware. Here are three recent unfortunate […]
