Making informed choices

Including nutritional information on restaurant and café menus may help to tackle the growing problem of obesity, a study suggests. A new Cochrane Review of evidence found that nutritional labelling on menus may reduce a person’s calorie intake. Researchers found that labelling on menus in restaurants led to a reduction of 47 calories purchased. Assuming an average meal of 600kcal, labelling on menus would reduce the number of calories purchased per meal by 7.8 per cent, they said. But the authors stressed that the quality of evidence reviewed was “low” and they were only “tentatively” suggesting that nutritional labelling on menus in restaurants could be used as part of a wider set of measures to tackle obesity. They called for more high-quality evidence to strengthen the findings. The Obesity Health Alliance, a coalition of 40 health bodies and charities in the UK, said the study showed that clear labelling helps empower people to make informed choices about the food they eat. It added that restaurant food “too often” can be a large portion “packed with hidden ingredients”. Researchers, who examined a total of 28 studies on food labelling, said they were unable to reach...