Providing Calorie Information on Fast-Food Restaurant Menu Boards: Consumer Views

Purpose. To gather consumer input about approaches to Providing energy composition, information for foods on fast-food. restaurant menus. Design. We., asked a subset of individuals (n = 150) in an experimental study about the influence of nutrition labeling on fast-food meal choices to evaluate calorie information on mock fast-food,menus in varioius formats. Setting. Three community sites in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan. area. Subjects. Adolescents and adults who are fast food at least once per week were recruited. Measures. Via a series of open-and close-ended questions, participants gave feedback about several formals for providing energy composition information for foods on fast-food restaurant menus. Analysis. Means andfrequ.encies were calculated, and chi(2) tests were canducied. Results. when asked to compare a menu, that provided calorie it information, for each menu item with a menu that provided the number of minutes of running that would be rep,re to burn the calories contained in each menu item, 71.0% of participants preferred the calorie information, over the physical activity information. participants also compared two approaches to providing caloric reference information on the menu (average daily calorie needs per day vs. per meal), and 61.3% preferred the calorie needs-per-meal formal. Conclusion. Our results may be useful in designing approaches to providing energy composition information for foods on fast-food restaurant menus. (Am J Health Promot, 2009,-24[2]:129-132.)