Nudging or Pushing, Calorie Counts Fail Again
15th February 2011
Elbel, Gyamfi, and Kersh join the parade of disconfirmation for calorie counts on menus. Here’s a selection from the abstract.
Design:
Natural experiment: Survey and receipt data were collected from low-income areas in NYC, and Newark, NJ (as a comparison city), before and after mandatory labeling began in NYC. Study restaurants included four of the largest chains located in NYC and Newark: McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Subjects:
A total of 349 children and adolescents aged 1–17 years who visited the restaurants with their parents (69%) or alone (31%) before or after labeling was introduced. In total, 90% were from racial or ethnic minority groups.
Results:
We found no statistically significant differences in calories purchased before and after labeling; many adolescents reported noticing calorie labels after their introduction (57% in NYC) and a few considered the information when ordering (9%). Approximately 35% of adolescents ate fast food six or more times per week and 72% of adolescents reported that taste was the most important factor in their meal selection. Adolescents in our sample reported that parents have some influence on their meal selection.
Conclusions:
Adolescents in low-income communities notice calorie information at similar rates as adults, although they report being slightly less responsive to it than adults. We did not find evidence that labeling influenced adolescent food choice or parental food choices for children in this population.
This will be my last post on any new disconfirming studies even though you can be assured there will be many more published. What’s the point? Bad Science Is Persuasive and unfortunately for bad scientists, science tends to be self-correcting.
The more interesting persuasion angle on this story is how the True Believers react to the disconfirmation. I’ve predicted a Dissonance response which means that all this bad news will only strengthen their beliefs and intensify their actions, just like the followers of Mrs. Keech. You might check out the websites for the Usual Gang of Suspects on this to see what they are saying. Are they modifying their drive for change or re-energizing for another push?
Good science is tough on bad science, but if you’re a persuasion maven, this is just another opportunity!