How the Perceived Healthfulness of Restaurant Menu Items Influences Sodium and Calorie Misperceptions: Implications for Nutrition Disclosures in Chain Restaurants

Abstract

The authors address some implications of recent legislation that will require calorie labeling for national chain restaurants. Drawing from the health halo and information disclosure literatures, the potential positive consumer outcomes associated with the disclosure of calorie (only) and additional nutrient information are examined. Results across four studies show that while most consumers underestimate calorie levels of restaurant menu items, the degree of underestimation is substantially greater for sodium. The provision of sodium content levels for menu items, in addition to calorie information, influences purchase intentions and choices of consumers with high health risk levels, but has little effect on other consumers. Reducing Americans' average daily intake of sodium (currently 3,400 mg) to the recommended level of 2,300 mg could eliminate 11 million cases of high blood pressure and prevent 92,000 annual deaths (Palar and Sturm 2009). Therefore, the results have potentially significant implications for consumer health and welfare and the restaurant industry.Nearly one-third of the calories in the standard American diet come from foods that add calories with little nutritional benefit-soft drinks, sweets and desserts, alcoholic beverages, and salty snacks (Block 2004). Therefore, it is not surprising that the prevalence of childhood and adult obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases has increased dramatically in the last 30 years. The unhealthiness of the American diet is the result of a complex mix of social, marketing, environmental, product, and individual (e.g., affective preferences) factors (Seiders and Petty 2004;Wansink 2010). Consequently, food consumption-related issues have been investigated from the perspective of many different disciplines. Within the field of marketing, much of this research has focused on the highly visible and well-publicized "obesity crisis." Given the strong relationship between the overconsumption of food and obesity, it is not surprising that calories have been the focus of many of these studies. However, America's recent preoccupation with calories has a potential downside-negative nutrients that are associated with the development of several serious health conditions may not always be receiving the level of attention they deserve.In this research, we propose and test halo and anchoring effects across nutrition attributes in four studies. Extensive prior research has shown that the perception of one attribute of an individual can strongly influence how other attributes of that individual are perceived (Roe, Levy, and Derby 1999). Recent research has found that such cognitive biases also extend to food. That is, consumers often seem to behave as though healthy foods have "halos" that extend to other characteristics of the food (Roe, Levy, and Derby 1999; Chandon and Wansink 2007). For example, some consumers may infer that an avocado is a "good diet food" because it is a fresh fruit perceived as healthy; however, avocados are not (relatively) low in calories.Healt...

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