Calorie-Counter Menus Bring Hope for Childhood Obesity

One hundred calories can be saved from a child’s meal simply by having the nutritional information on the menu before ordering.

Parents picking out fast-food items chose fewer high calorie items for their children when they were presented with the calorific values, compared to traditional menus with no such information.

In an age where childhood obesity is an ever growing worry to many Western nations, this may bring fresh hope in ways that the restaurant and food industry can help matters. With serious consequences for future health, including increased risks of diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure there is no better time to investigate ways in which childhood obesity can be reduced.

This new research, carried out in Seattle, USA, demonstrates that parents do seem to understand the importance of a low calorie diet.

“This is encouraging, and suggests that parents do want to make wise food decisions for their children,” says leader of the research, Dr. Pooja Tandon, before going on to warn “but they need help”.

Although the conclusions are promising, it means that without the necessary calorie-counter data on menus, parents are still making choices for their children that may lead to weight gain and obesity. A wider understanding of which foods are likely to contain a high number of calories is needed for true change; alternatively all menus would need to include extensive information similar to that given in the study.

Dr. Tandon and her researchers work at the Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute, and are dedicated to improving conditions for children and their health.

She said, “The end goal is that with restaurants, parents, and communities working together we are able to provide a better nutritional environment for children to eventually tackle the childhood obesity epidemic that we are facing”.

They gave 99 parents, all with children between the ages of 3 and 6 years old, a menu from McDonald’s fast food restaurant. Half the participants received a normal menu and half a menu with additional nutritional information, including calorie counts for each item. Those with the calorie information chose meals for their children with on average 20% fewer calories, compared to the control group. Interestingly there was no difference between the groups in the amount of calories in items the parents chose for themselves.

There is often confusion between calories and fat content in foods, and some struggle to know which to keep an eye on when choosing ingredients and ordering from menus.

Calories are a measurement of the energy gained from food when it is broken down in the body. This can be used to estimate how much exercise is needed to burn off food that has been eaten.

Fat is a component of food, just like carbohydrates and protein, defined by the types of molecules it is made up of. These components hold varying amounts of energy, and hence different calorific values, with fat giving the highest number of calories per gram.

Excess calories that are not burnt off during exercise are stored in the body as fat, in high amounts causing obesity.

This research comes at a time when concerns about childhood obesity have led to numerous campaigns, schemes and promotions in various countries.

Amongst these projects the Change4Life campaign by the National Health Service in the UK aims to support families towards a healthier lifestyle by eating the right things and exercising more, with projects such as Breakfast4Life, Walk4Life and a new scheme for pregnant women named Start4Life.

Similarly, ‘Cooking with your Kids’ is a scheme in Birmingham, UK, whereby families learn which food is healthy and how to cook it together during free courses.

Karen Saunders, senior public health manager at the Department of Health, West Midlands, praises these schemes, warning “It’s worrying to think that if the nation carries on as we are, 9 out of 10 of today’s children risk growing up with dangerous levels of fat in their bodies”.

With such a wealth of healthy eating campaigns, many seemingly successful so far, it is interesting to ponder which direction policy should now take to combat obesity in young people.

This new research shows for the first time that menu labeling can have a positive effect on calorific intake of young children, by affecting their parents’ choices of what to order.

Does this mean that all restaurants should be made to display nutritional information for their items, taking some responsibility in the obesity issue?

Dr. Tandon agrees, “What menu labeling does is that it gives consumers, individuals and parents the tools to make healthier better choices when they are eating out at restaurants”.

Chains such as McDonalds do already put nutritional information for their products on their websites, is this enough, or should this data be readily available at the time of ordering? Some states in the USA are now implementing menu-labeling policies for food chains, for example in some areas of Washington and New York, and with more considering it for the near future. Smaller steps are seen in many supermarkets, with ‘traffic-light’ style labeling, for example in Sainsbury’s, UK.

Alternatively, better education on nutrition and how to cook healthily at home may be a more challenging but longer-lasting cultural strategy to help combat childhood obesity worldwide, without the need for extensive lengthy menus, with full lists of nutritional values and ingredients.