Proof that Obamacare menu labels won’t work

For six years, the city has required restaurants to post calorie counts prominently so customers can consider them while ordering. Yet a new study released Monday and published in Health Affairs adds to mounting evidence that viewing caloric information doesn’t prompt people to make healthier decisions.

After analyzing receipts and survey responses from thousands of consumers at four fast-food restaurant chains in New York City, New York University School of Medicine researchers found no statistically significant reduction over time in the calorie or nutrition content of the foods they purchased, nor did consumers visit the restaurants less.

“There’s definitely a subset of people who see and use this information, but we’re not seeing any changes at the population level,” researcher Jonathan Cantor told the Washington Examiner.

The study has importance nationally, because President Obama’s Affordable Care Act requires chain restaurants, eateries in grocery stores, bakeries and coffee shops to post calorie counts for menu items. For several years, the Food and Drug Administration has delayed the rule, which is now scheduled to take effect one month after the 2016 presidential election.

The aim is to reduce the nation’s troublingly high overweight and obesity rates by ensuring Americans see the high calorie content in their favorite foods.

There is some evidence that mandating restaurants to post calorie counts does incentivize the eateries to provider healthier offerings. Another study published Monday in Health Affairs, this one conducted by Johns Hopkins University researchers, compared restaurants that have voluntarily followed the requirement — including Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s, Panera and Starbucks— to those that haven’t.

They found that for newly introduced food items, the restaurants voluntarily posting caloric information offered food with lower average calorie counts. So even if viewing calorie counts doesn’t directly change consumer behavior, the change to restaurants’ behavior could promote change.

“Instead of directly changing consumer behavior, menu labeling could encourage restaurants to reformulate current offerings or develop products with fewer calories, leading to lowered calorie consumption by customers,” the researchers wrote.

While the National Restaurant Association is generally on board with the mandate, other associations for food establishments aren’t, including the National Grocers Association and the Food Marketing Institute, which represents food retailers and wholesalers.

And some Democrats have joined Republicans to protest them. Reps. Cathy McMorris Rogers, R-Wash., and Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., have teamed up on a bill that would lighten the requirements and the penalties for non-compliance. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is scheduled to debate and vote on the bill Tuesday and Wednesday.

Sens. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Angus King, I-Maine, have a similar bill in the Senate, which would exempt pizza delivery joints and grocery stores from the requirements.

So far, the evidence appears to be mostly on their side, at least when it comes to fast-food chains.

In his study, Cantor and his colleagues compared Burger King, Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in New York City to restaurants in New Jersey, which doesn’t have labeling requirements.

In those establishments, which have a predominantly low-income, high-minority customer base, the labeling didn’t make a substantial difference in what customers ordered or how often they visited. Cantor acknowledges that labeling could have more of an impact if restaurants visited by a different demographic were studied.

But he says his and other studies increasingly show that calorie labeling is far from the panacea to obesity that some health advocates have hoped for.

“I think we increasingly know that no single policy is going to alter the obesity epidemic at one time,” he said. “We’re going to have to think about other public policy sorts of solutions.”