Calorie labelling on menus: Progressive or problematic?
As of 6th April, it became a legal requirement for food establishments with over 250 employees to disclose calorie information on their menus. While proponents of this legislation claim it will encourage people to make healthier choices, others argue it will have a long-lasting damaging impact on those who have an unhealthy relationship with food.
As per the Government’s new legislation, calorie counts must now be included on physical menus, online menus, food delivery platforms and food labels. This applies to larger restaurants, cafes and fast food chains with 250 staff or more, but smaller independent businesses are exempt. Any food establishment that meets this requirement and fails to comply could be threatened with a £2,500 fine.
The new policy, which was implemented last month, is intended to tackle rising obesity in the UK. According to the UK Government, displaying calorie counts on ‘points of choice’ will encourage people to be more mindful about what they are putting into their bodies.
Many of us are unlikely to know or think about the number of calories in some of our favourite meals. Considering this, it is hoped that having some level of awareness of calorie counts will allow us to make informed choices about what we eat and maybe persuade us to opt for something slightly healthier. It is also predicted that this will put pressure on some restaurants to cut back on higher calorie ingredients, so that people aren’t deterred from ordering what they want.
Jo Churchill, the Public Health Minister, claims that the legislation is “an important building block in (the Government’s) strategy to support and encourage people in achieving and maintaining a healthier weight.”
But will the new measures do more harm than good?
The Government’s approach has received considerable backlash for a number of reasons. A lot of people simply do not want to know the number of calories in their meal when dining out. Most often, even if weight loss is the goal, going out for a meal is intended to be an enjoyable leisure activity, a social outing or a special occasion, so a lot of people take it as an opportunity to indulge and do not want to be made to feel guilty about what they order.
Those in the hospitality sector also fear that it may also have an adverse effect on businesses. Menu labelling is expensive to implement, and could cost up to £40,000 per menu run for some eating establishments. Given the current economic climate, these measures seem to have been poorly timed.
Kate Nicholls, Chief Executive at UK Hospitality, claimed that the regulations are “a slap in the face” and came into force at “the worst possible time.”
“It’s completely unfair to expect businesses devastated by Covid to all of a sudden introduce complicated and costly new labelling when they’ve much more pressing matters to attend to – recouping their losses of the past 24-months for a start,” she added.
As people become aware of the calories in their meals, they are also more likely to refrain from ordering as many courses as they typically would have done before, particularly desserts, which may come as a loss for many businesses.
But the widely anticipated impact of the policy on the psychological well-being of the wider society is of the gravest concern. Mental health advocates have taken to Twitter and TikTok to vent about the mental distress that it has already caused a lot of people, particularly for those who have a difficult relationship with food or are trying to recover from an eating disorder.
Over the course of the pandemic, the number of people affected by eating disorders has soared, and many have seen their condition worsen as a result of prolonged treatment delays. According to Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, it is estimated that around 1.25 million people are currently suffering from an eating disorder in the UK alone.
The charity has expressed its concerns about the Government’s current approach to tackling obesity, claiming it risks severe harm to people with eating disorders and those vulnerable to developing one. Whilst recognising the importance of curbing obesity, Beat argues that these strategies are highly problematic because they merely work to shame the public into losing weight.
Public health campaigns that are entirely centred around calories and weight loss do not necessarily promote a healthy lifestyle, but they do seem to exacerbate obsessive calorie counting, food guilt and disordered eating among those who have a troublesome relationship with food.
Multi-award winning mental health campaigner and founder of #DumpTheScales, Hope Virgo, has openly denounced the Government for introducing calorie labelling, which she believes is destructive and “an inaccurate way of managing health.” She continues:
“I honestly still can’t quite believe that this has happened. For so many people affected by eating disorders restaurants will become an even more toxic and fearful place. It will normalise conversations around food and exercise… Over the pandemic we have seen a huge increase in eating disorders, with services completely overrun. Do we really want future generations to grow up basing their food decisions on numbers? Since the legislation came into force I have been inundated with messages from people who have so much fear not just for themselves but those around them.”
Challenging old disordered habits is fundamental to eating disorder recovery. Eating in social settings and ordering ‘fear foods’ are crucial milestones for someone to reach when working to overcome their eating disorder. And when taking on these challenges, which are already hugely mentally and emotionally taxing, being exposed to calorie counts can be an enormous setback. Calorie labels are very difficult to ignore, and may completely determine someone’s choice by dissuading them from ordering or eating the meal they originally wanted.
And this is a slippery slope: one bad dining-out experience may cause calorie counting habits and other old disordered patterns and behaviours to resurface, and calorie-induced guilt could potentially even trigger a relapse.
An individual with lived experience of an eating disorder told Beat that: “Despite having recovered from an eating disorder, the introduction of calories on more menus has at times made me question the item I’m choosing and made me feel guilty for not choosing the lower calorie option. When I was poorly, I don’t think that I would have been able to fight against the urge to choose the lowest calorie option, as the eating disorder voice would have been so strong.”
Many have argued that the calorie labelling regulations may lead to a rise in the number of people developing eating disorders. When certain foods start to be associated with high or low calorie numbers, it perpetuates the fallacy that foods high in calories are inherently bad and low calorie options are ‘better’ for you because they don’t cause weight gain.
But the reality is not quite as binary as this. Calories are not an indicator of the nutritional value of foods. In fact, there are many nutritionally rich foods that are considered high calorie, and low calorie meals may not be substantial enough for everyone. Physically active people and young people who are still growing, for example, require a higher calorie intake that will adequately sustain energy levels throughout the day.
Anti-obesity campaigns that paint a negative picture of calories are likely to have a detrimental impact on impressionable children and teenagers. Some parents have been shocked to discover that calorie labelling regulations also extend to children’s menus, fearing this may propagate disordered eating by encouraging young people to calorie count or restrict in their most vital stages of development.
Beat ambassador and eating disorder survivor Phoebe Webb has also shared her thoughts on the calorie labelling legislation:
“No one truly benefits from explicit calorie information on menus. Those numbers are non-representative of nutrition and ascribe an arbitrary number to food under the guise that the higher the number the more sinful it is, and therefore you are.
“Diet culture, which our government is perpetuating, insidiously worms its way into everyone’s consciousness, affecting our nation’s perception of food and body. The first time I used a takeaway app after calories were made mandatory on menus, I had my first cry about food in years, and my recovery is long-term and stable. Something that I worked so hard to do with relative ease became nearly impossible and caused unnecessary and extreme distress. How is someone to unlearn the inaccuracies that contributed to a severe mental illness when the government insist on its importance?”
Phoebe talks more about this and everything eating disorder-related on her podcast Not About Food, which is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You can also learn more about her campaign and career on her Twitter at @Feehlo.
The new government policy has not only been criticised for its potentially harmful effects - many have also claimed that it will be ineffective for reducing obesity in the long-term. In a Cochrane review, it was concluded that evidence corroborating the expected correlation between calorie labelling on menus and a reduction in calorie consumption was both few and far between and of low-quality. More recently, another study found that, when first implemented, calorie counts on the menus of fast food chains in the US did cause orders to decrease in calories by 4%. However, this rate slumped over the next year, suggesting that calorie labelling regulations may not be successful for sustained periods of time.
So what’s the solution?
Rather than making calorie-labelled menus the default in restaurants, nutritional information should be offered upon request of a customer. Being made aware of calorie counts should always be a choice rather than an obligation, so a calorie-free menu must always be made available.
The Hearts Minds Genes Coalition for eating disorders, which is chaired by Hope Virgo, has composed an open letter calling on the Government to move away from their calorie-centred weight loss policies.
The letter urges the Government to:
Make a commitment that the evaluation of the new legislation to label restaurants with calories on will happen in the first year with a commitment that members from the eating disorder community and experts will be involved in this review;
Make it mandatory for every single restaurant that has to have mandatory calorie labelling will also have a no-calorie menu choice for those who wish to request this;
Remove the labelling of calories on children’s menus in all restaurants immediately.
You can find this letter on Hope Virgo’s Twitter and Instagram grid. Please lend your support by sharing it far and wide.
How to cope with calorie labelling
If you feel worried about dining out at a food establishment that displays calorie labels, please remember:
Calories are fuel, and you should never be made to feel guilty for eating
It’s always worth asking whether a calorie-free menu is available
If there are no calorie-free menus, ask someone you’re with to read the menu for you
If you’re at a restaurant you’ve been to before and you know what you’d like to order, refrain from looking at the menu at all
If you feel comfortable enough to look at the calorie labelled menu, try to order what you actually want to eat rather than allowing calorie counts to dictate your choice
You never have to ‘exercise off’ your food, even if you consider the meal you’ve eaten to be high in calories.
If you’re concerned about your relationship with food or are currently struggling with an eating disorder, please don’t hesitate to contact your GP. Alternatively, get in touch with Talk ED for support.
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