Vital Signs: displaying a calorie count can lead to healthy eating

Encouraged by the Government as part of the Public Health Responsibility Deal, and approved by many obesity experts, the aim is to make people make more informed about the food they eat.

The scheme has been running in New York for a while now. Several studies support an association between fast-food consumption and excessive energy intake, and all have shown how customers often underestimate the number of calories in restaurant meals. New York surveys found 15 per cent of customers reported using the calorie information and these customers purchased an average of 106 fewer calories than customers who did not use the calorie information.

Here in the UK, the Department of Health says displaying the calorie content "makes people more aware of the energy content of their foods and does influence people's choices". But McDonald's has done its own research into the subject and, perhaps unsurprisingly, has gloatingly announced that its results contradict those of the Americans, reporting that while eight out of 10 of its customers believe all companies should display this information, fewer than one in five said it would affect what they eat.

I'm confused, as the McDonald's research seems to support what the Americans found. In my view, if around 15 per cent of consumers change their behaviour, that is an admirable start - and better than any results achieved from previous healthy eating drives.

If I have any concerns, they do not focus on how consumers will behave because of this new information but on how the food manufacturers will. Because they only have to display calorie count, not content, I suspect the more unscrupulous food outlets will simply process the food more, adding poor-quality filler ingredients, such as starch, to bulk the food out while reducing calorie content. A calorie war between the high street chains will break out. Add lots of salt to make up for the loss of taste and you have a low-calorie version of a meal of poor nutritional value.

Ideally, restaurants would display the full nutritional breakdown of their meals, including the fat, protein, salt, sugar and fibre levels.

This would mean healthier choices could be made, and poor-quality establishments would have to improve their offerings. But I think the top-notch restaurants would suffer most. Many offer dishes of such high fat, salt and calorie content they make a Big Mac look positively medicinal.

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