Giving McDonald's eaters calorie guides did not curb bad eating habits

[The Straight Story]

Giving McDonald's eaters calorie guides did not curb bad eating habits

Educating people on the number of calories they should eat may not help them make better choices.

A new study published July 18 in the American Journal of Public Health showed that providing people with calorie guidelines did not help them make better food choices, even when calorie counts for each item were available on the menu.

Several states and cities in the U.S. require that chain restaurants reveal calorie information for their items. Congress has already passed legislation to develop a national calorie labeling system in order to aid health care reform.

However, previous studies have shown that listing calories hasn't exactly helped Americans trim down their waistlines. It hasn't helped that fast food and restaurant food still remain calorie-laden. A 14-year study showed that fast food restaurants have only made minimal improvements to the nutritional value of their items, and 25 percent of Americans eat fast food two or more times a week.

"The general inability of calorie labeling to result in an overall reduction in the number of calories consumed has already been pretty widely shown," study author Julie Downs, an associate research professor of social and decision sciences in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, said to HealthDay. "So that's nothing new. But in the face of that, there has been the growing thought that perhaps the problem is that people don't know how to use the information without some framework, some guidance."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57594536/giving-mcdonalds-eaters-calorie-guides-did-not-curb-bad-eating-habits/

[Chipper Chat]

1. When you want a Big Mac...

...you go out and buy a Big Mac.
Calorie count is irrelevant.

[The Straight Story]

2. Don't worry, over time we will make them change the packaging, show a dead fat guy

on the box with his stomach cut open or something like that.

There is no shortage of control freaks who won't be happy until everyone lives by their beliefs/religion. And I, for one, will no longer stand in their way but will assist them because I have learned that we are safer and healthier if we let other people remove our choices....

[W_HAMILTON]

16. Posting calorie counts is not forcing everyone to live by someone else's beliefs.

I appreciate having the calories posted on the McDonald's drive-thru menu and I have altered my purchases based on them. No, I don't go for apple slices over fries, but I have chosen burgers and wraps that have lower calories over similar ones with higher calories. Having calories posted can't be much of a big deal to a corporation the size of McDonald's.

On another note, Dairy Queen would probably go out of business if it posted their calories! Recently, I went there and bought a large S'mores Blizzard. I figured it was bad (maybe like 600 calories?), but when I got home and checked out the calorie count, it had over 1,400 calories! I had no idea. If calorie counts had been posted, I most certainly would have opted for something less ... obscene, lol.

I don't think the posting of calorie counts will make me eat an undressed salad and apple slices at McDonald's, but it does help me select items that have fewer calories among a group of items that I may be interested in.

[Arugula Latte]

18. I think it's so interesting that so many, even here on DU, are upset when information is provided.

In this thread in response #53 a DUer labeled people "food fascists" just for giving information. Isn't that the opposite of fascism? Nobody is forcing anyone to eat anything or not eat anything, so how is that limiting freedom?

There are a lot of thin skins around here when it comes to someone just giving data on nutritional values. I find that bizarre.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023150089#post53

[The Straight Story]

19. I don't have a problem with it

My problem is that since it is not getting the desired effect or curtailing choices in an open and fair way there will be new tactics and they will ratchet them up until they get what they desire (ie, that you conform and make the same choices).

Posting calories is pretty common sense and allows people to make informed decisions.

[d_r]

6. stopped there the other day

on the way back from camping. I noticed that the big mac and fries both had nutrition information all over the package. They were covered with it. I doubt anyone pays much attention at that point though.

[FrodosPet]

37. The truth about McDonalds' success

[d_r]

39. thats pretty much spot on

I realized that after a week of summer camp is pretty much the only time that salt and fat is a good thing.

What the guy said about orange popcycles is the story of the kids at my house.

[SheilaT]

54. I LOVE the orange popsicles!

You two can just send me your orange popsicles. I'll eat them.

[Lugnut]

55. Same goes for a quarter pounder with cheese.

Sometimes you just need to have one and damn the calories.

[hedgehog]

3. The problem is, none of the food is in a good healthy calorie range!

Once you cross the threshold of any fast food chain, health goes out the window!

[dkf]

5. What is a good range?

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

45. Google is your friend

if you actually care about healthful calorie ranges.

[dkf]

4. Comparing a 390 calorie fiesta salad vs 550 Big Mac...not such a biggie.

Look at those frappes and shakes though. Now that is appalling.

http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/getnutrition/nutritionfacts.pdf

[JI7]

51. but most who get the big mac will also get the fries and soda

[dkf]

52. I get the Big Mac every once in a while.

We share the fries 5 ways and drink water. I'm too cheap to buy a drink.

[ZombieHorde]

7. People who go to fast food places are not looking for healthy choices.

Just like people who go to bars are not looking for healthy choices.

However, telling other people how to live is oh so fun!!!

[The Straight Story]

8. Yep. Ban smokers from bars because of health concerns...while you are drinking rum at same bar

[Butterbean]

10. Yep. By the time you're in the McD's drive thru, I don't think

stellar nutrition and healthy eating are at the top of your list. All you're really thinking is that you have a huge hankering for fries, calories be damned.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

46. Again, as many here have noted, that's not true for all. I go to McD's about three times a year,

and it's always for the sake of convenience. I must admit to liking those McNuggets, but I hate their fries. I never order fries anywhere, though, because I don't like them enough to justify the calories and bad fat. If I'm eating unhealthy crap, I have to really love the taste. And I want to know how many calories I'm taking in for the sake of an indulgence.

[Silent3]

50. I've been getting away with eating sweet potato fries fairly often...

...two to three times per week. It's probably only once every 3-4 weeks I eat regular fries.

It's not like sweet potato fries are that much healthier, but they at least carry a few more nutrients along with the fat and calories, and the servings are typically smaller than I see for regular fries, around 350 calories or so.

I eat a lot of things that I'm sure many of today's food puritans would frown upon, but it's working well for me, and my diet is certainly way better than before. I got a check up after I'd lost the first 50 lbs and my cholesterol was all the way down to 133. I had good blood work numbers all the way around.

[RB TexLa]

9. Big suprise, people go to fast food place for fast food

[Politicalboi]

11. I would think it may deter some

But mostly in real restaurants, not McDonald's. I'm not fat, and I can eat anything, but when I see the prices, that makes me think twice about what I am going to order over calories.

[Ed Suspicious]

13. I don't know, it seems to help me and my family. I might not keep me out of the restaurant

but once I'm there it helps me choose between equally "tasty" choices. If I know I have 650 calories budgeted for my meal, it helps me decide what's in that range. I don't see how removing info from the packaging helps me make choices. The info visible on the package and menu boards is helping me to make informed choices.

[darkangel218]

14. Oh please. Life is too short to deny yourself a big mac.

Or some other tasty treat. To each their own.

Let people live their lives the way they chose. Inform them on what's healthy and what's not , and leave it to that.

I personally find those Don't eat that! Don't drink that! types extreamly annoying. To each their fucking own x

[AllINeedIsCoffee]

15. Whether it deters me or not, it's information I like to have. nt

[Igel]

17. Your quote ends with a typical attitude.

"If they have the information and don't agree with me, it must be because they don't know what to do with the information."

Inferred: "Because I'm superior and know better, and those like me must conduct an intervention to save them from their own benighted selves." Okay, that's cynical, and in more than a few cases I have no doubt people don't know how to contextualize it ... and would care.

I have the context. When I get 3 or 4 refills of a tanker-sized softdrink, I'm fully aware of the calorie count, impact on insulin levels, amount of caffeine and stress on the old adrenals. I know that I'm consuming empty calories and my ghrelin level is already saying, "You're not hungry, dork." I don't care. Some days I worry about my organically grown (by me) vegetables and fresh salad, the portion size of meat, consumption of my nice homemade probiotic filmyolk or water kefir or live-culture yoghurt, monitor the amount of salt I put in my food and balance it with sufficient KCl ...

Then there are days like today, when I'm planning a serious Dunkin Donuts run in between pop-up thunderstorms.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

31. I think it's pretty clear that a lot of people don't know what to do with the information.

Huge numbers of McDonalds' customers eat that crap frequently with no balancing it with any fresh salads (OK, maybe a hunk of iceberg with 1000 calories worth of blue cheese dressing on it), nutritious veggies (organic or otherwise), or much of anything that's not just very, very unhealthful.

If they're actually looking at the fact that their one "meal" is more than that number of calories they should have in a few days (do the "nutrition" facts come with anything to indicate that fact? Or the hypoglycemic index, or anything else that would help people put those numbers in to context? ) and they're not cutting back on that shit, then they don't know what to do with the information.

[6000eliot]

40. Which is so much worse than being smug about your unhealthy food choices,

I guess.

[SoCalDem]

20. Close to TWO generations have forgotten what "going out to eat" meant/means

People USED to cook and eat at home...MOST of the time.

They would eat at a restaurant for a special occasion, when they were remodeling their kitchens, or when they traveled.

No one CARED about the calories of food they ate at a restaurant, because they did it so rarely. This how people were introduced to different foods from the meals we all ate regularly at home.

People also did not sit around with snacks at the ready, or walk around with a tub-o-soda.

Things like cookies, cakes, pies, chips, soft drinks were relegated to the occasionally (like at picnics) eaten foods. NOW those things are a daily drive-thru staple for too many people.

I was trying to remember when our own kids first ate fast food..Until 1981 we never lived anywhere that had any.. The month before we left Kansas, we got a Dairy Queen, but had no other "branded" fast foods. There were a few hamburger-stand type places, but everything else was a family owned restaurant.

As long as we controlled their transportation, they did not have any fast foods unless we were on the road...And even then we prefer to stop---get out and go to a nice restaurant.

They were all teenagers before they had any access to fast foods.

Many kids today are eating happy meals as soon as they get teeth these days

[WinkyDink]

22. Chips and sodas "occasionally"? Not from the mid-50's on! We had a Charles' Chips TRUCK deliver!

[SoCalDem]

25. You were a lucky ducky

We never had chips...except for a picnic..

[NickB79]

27. Don't forget the Schwan's Ice Cream truck!

They'd even come out to the bumfuck nowhere farm we lived on in central Minnesota when I was a kid in the 80's.

[NickB79]

28. We only ate out once a week as kids

We'd only go into town from the farm for shopping once a week on the weekends. We'd get fast food then.

On our birthdays, we got to go out to Dairy Queen and/or McDonald's, and then see a movie.

Once a month, we'd go to Pizza Hut for a nice family dinner.

It was actually really nice.

[onyourleft]

43. In a small Kansas...

...town where I lived until the age of ten, we had a Dairy Queen right across the street from the movie theater. So, that would have been before 1954.

I ate fast food at K.U. when cheap hamburgers and a cup of coco were staples on Sunday night due to no dinner service in the dorms. I'm sure I had some fast food growing up in Kansas City; however, meals were most always home cooked (and no whining about what was served). I really cannot remember "going out to eat" except for the occasional picnic.

[WinkyDink]

21. Do expensive restaurants with marbled steaks and foie gras give calorie counts? If so,

what has been the effect?

[leftstreet]

30. +1

[1-Old-Man]

42. They don't even put the prices on the menu, let alone nutritional information

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

44. No, but we're talking about a problem affecting a tiny proportion of the people who eat at MickeyD's

regularly.

[Iris]

23. It's curbed mine. n/t

[HappyMe]

24. I suppose it's good info to have.

If I have a hankering for a Quarter pounder and fries, it's not going to stop me. I don't eat there often, and don't need to worry over calories.

[killbotfactory]

26. A lot of eating habits are hard to break due to income and free time constraints.

Cheap convenient foods tend to be the worst for us, nutritionally.

There is also the fact that they tend to be more immediately satisfying.

That and there are subsidized, calorie-laden, nutrition-less sweeteners in everything.

[exlrrp]

29. If youre regularly or even semi regulrly eating at Mcdonalds

you don't care about calorie counts very much.

[Iris]

36. not true at all

In recent years I've found myself in my car much more than I'd like to be and have had to resort to the drive through at McDonald's at least once a week. I care a lot about calories and find the calorie counts help out a lot.

[Arcanetrance]

32. Personally don't eat at McDonald's I don't care for how their food tastes

That said on occasion I do break down and have something completely greasy and unhealthy. A double cheeseburger with pork roll on it. That being said I'm all for letting people eat what they want but teaching moderation and relegating things like McDonald's and the like back to an occasional treat.

[DirkGently]

33. Kind of misses the point.

People have a right to know what's being sold to them as "food." Many restaurant and fast food dishes contain astonishing amounts of fat, sugar, salt & calories for no good reason.

The information is the point, not trying to make people behave in one way or another.

It will also introduce a species of competition heretofore unknown in the food business. If one outfit's turkey sandwich has two or three or 12 times the amount of calories or fat or whatnot, it will at least be embarrassing to the establishment and allow the possibility for people to choose something else if they wish.

[The Straight Story]

34. As noted above:

I am a-ok with them providing the info and think it is a good idea to help people make informed decisions. We have done so in the past with other things as well.

It is when those things fail to get people to change their habits that the BS starts.

[kwassa]

35. A calorie guide by itself is not a guide to healthy eating.

Many people have no idea how many calories they should be eating each day. And no idea of what kind of calories.

I live in one of those places that requires the calorie count, and I find it fairly shocking. Salads with 1200 calories?

[eilen]

38. I think it is good to have the nutritional/calorie labels

It does help to have that information. However, I suspect that once you decide to walk into a McDonalds, you have already pretty much given up for that day. I rarely go to one and when I do I usually choose a grilled wrap or just a plain jane cheeseburger, and practice some willpower and not order fries with that. I never order soda, unsweetened iced tea. This happens when I experience unexpected longer shifts of work that occur without meal break on my way home and when I travel.

I do not even consider calorie counts when we go out to eat at a local restaurant during the week. We go maybe 2-3 times a month and include cocktails. Most of our meals are home made and our diets are generally pretty healthy.

[Silent3]

41. For me, it certainly made drinking shakes are far less frequent occurrence

Then again, as soon as I decided to lose weight and get in shape last April (I've lost 85 lbs.) I've only been to McDonald's rarely. For a while I still grabbed breakfast at McDonald's once a week (Egg McMuffin, Hash Browns, OJ -- comes to around 650 calories as I recall), but I stopped doing that after a while and have only eaten at McDonald's a handful of times in the past year.

Even though I've developed a pretty good sense of caloric values, shakes were one thing that threw me for a loop. I'd been guessing they had about half the calories they really have.

My new fast food is typically Chipotle or Panera. I had been eating at Burger King maybe once per week last summer over a span of time when they had sweet potato fries and I could get a Whopper with cheese (no mayo, no pickles) on a whole grain bun. I know that changing the bun and choosing sweet potato fries over regular fries was hardly that big a change in nutritional value anyway, and as a once-per-week thing it mattered even less in the big picture, but once I couldn't make that little nod toward improving the quality of my meal, I've hardly gone back to Burger King since.

I've been doing so much exercise lately (I burned 1500 calories yesterday, 900-1400/day is typical 6 days per week) that I could easily eat fast food more often, including drinking a few of those shakes, but I try to fill my calorie deficit with healthier choices most of the time, or, if I'm really going to treat myself, tastier indulgences than McDonald's (like last night's trip to Cheesecake Factory).

At any rate, I'm not too surprised at the results. I'm happy to have the extra info, but those of us who want that info are probably less likely to frequent McDonald's, or similar places, in the first place.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

47. Congrats on the weight loss! It can be very hard for people with that much weight to lost to make a

change. I'll bet you're feeling much better in many ways.

[Silent3]

49. Thanks. While it certainly wasn't easy...

...it hasn't been what I'd call brutal, it's taken a moderate amount of determination and discipline, nothing heroic.

While I still wouldn't say I love the exercise I do now, I've figured out a routine that's a lot more tolerable and easier to stick with than what I did the first time I lost a lot of weight, back in the nineties. Considering that even back then, hating what I was doing, I stayed fit and trim for over eight years, I feel good about my prospects of sticking with what I'd doing now even longer, since it suits me a lot better.

It's pretty much the same story with food. In the nineties, somehow I managed to stick with a low-fat diet for nearly eight years even though I was quite frequently hungry. Now that I'm doing something (very, VERY loosely) like South Beach or paleo, my food choices are a lot easier to stick with too. I've actually gotten to the point that I have to make a conscious effort to eat enough food since now I'm working out hard enough that I need 3000 calories or more a day so that I don't keep losing weight, and can start building up more muscle.

[Apophis]

48. This proves people are idiots.

People don't want to be educated on the bad choices they make. They're content with their fat asses and weeble-wobble bodies.

[lindisfarne]

53. reality

I'll bet it had some impact on some people, but most people who would care were mostly likely already aware, and not eating much at McD's (keep in mind, the appetizers and entrees in many restaurants are just as bad as the food at McD's).

I'm guessing that the average person who goes to McD's regularly and orders the high calorie, high fat items really does not understand issues of nutrition. Simply giving them a chart isn't going to change their behavior. They also may be more likely to have genetic factors which cause high fat/high salt food to be more reinforcing.

I don't see how an occasional hamburger & small french fries is really all that much worse at McDonalds compared to at any other restaurant.

I'm also guessing that the average person who regularly eats at McD's has a lower average income, compared to those who don't. If you're hungry & not near your house, you can get food off of McD's dollar menu (which in many areas is shrinking or >$1) for a reasonable price.

[onpatrol98]

56. Unhealthy lifestyles...

I think weight gain and other health issues are the result of a combination of factors...not just unhealthy food. But, unhealthy food, stress, lack of exercise, depression, etc.

So, although changing one dynamic makes a difference with a certain segment of the population, it's just a much larger problem than sticking the dietary information on the packaging or next to the food item at the drive through.

Although, I personally like the information, and it has curbed our visits. But, then again, we weren't frequent visitors, in the first place.

I feel similarly about cafeteria food. I feel kids need healthy alternatives and food that tastes good. But, I don't believe the key to fighting childhood obesity is to be found in changing the cafeteria food. I think the problem is multifaceted and complicated. For instance, their home environments, lack of extracurricular opportunities, latchkey children who can't participate in activities, and a limited availability of activities that appeal to more kids, stress, etc.

[Hekate]

57. Giving McDonald's employees a budget does not make them able to *buy food*, either

The Golden Arches, sadly, is bad news all around.

[Raine]

58. Fast food industry fought tooth & nail to keep off the calorie

count and nutritional guides, they obviously don't know their customer base at all.