Calorie Counts on Menus: The effect on British teenagers

One of the major government trends of the 21st century has been to encourage British consumers to make healthy choices about what they eat and drink. Many of these efforts have been targeted at children and young people as scientists believe that starting to eat well and exercise at an early age can have life-long benefits. Since I have been in nursery, we have seen initiatives to make School meals and hospital patient food healthier, restrictions on advertisements on fast foods to children and self-policing by members of the industry, for example: supermarkets removing sweetie displays from by the tills. However, statistics show that problems with childhood obesity continue to increase; there was a rise from 9.9% in 2019-2020 to 14.4% to 2020-2021. At the same time, through social media there has been a heightened public awareness of conditions such as anorexia and bulimia where young people and adults have a difficult relationship with food. The search has continued to find effective ways to create an environment in which I and other British teenagers can make sensible and informed decisions about our diet.

Effective from 6 April this year, the government introduced new rules requiring large businesses to display the calorie information for food and drinks on their menus, The Calorie Labelling Out of Home Regulations. Legislation has forced manufacturers of pre-packaged foods and drinks to notify consumers of the calorie count for years now. Some use this information positively to promote their product as healthy, such as Coca Cola with Diet Coke and Muller Light yogurts. Other companies are frequently targeted in the media for providing unhealthy foods, such as MacDonalds and KFC, and have introduced new ranges, such as chicken wraps, and advertised them heavily to address this perception. However, following the example of the state of Kerala in India, who was the first to introduce a ‘fat tax’, the government, as well as other governments all over the world, has been under pressure to do more.

There are also important themes in the media around the environmental impact of foods, such as carbon created by dairy cows and food miles to get a box of blueberries. Many people also worry about animal welfare. Things are further confused by the number of teenagers choosing a vegan diet which restricts choice and, despite being plant based, does not seem to necessarily lead to healthier outcomes. I have examined the question of how, in this confusing and polarising environment, will disclosing calories on menus impact teenagers; when confronted by a menu many of my peers really do not know what the right choice to make is and will the new rules help them?

At present, almost 1 in 3 children starting year 7 are overweight and the effect of the COVID 19 virus is believed to have meant that even more young people are now obese than ever before. There is a clear need for urgent action to tackle these figures and there have been major campaigns to encourage the public to exercise more regularly and various initiatives targeted at young people, for example Everyday Active - Every Day launched in 2021. At the same time, the government have been trying to support the hospitality industry to recover from the effects of COVID and the impact that the end of the furlough scheme and VAT increases have had on them. Because of this the aim of the new rules must be to have people make informed choices, not stop eating out altogether. However, the question remains about whether this will happen in practice.

The government first proposed introducing the new menu calorie count in 2020 and a survey by Public Health England showed that 79% of people asked supported the measures. There is good evidence that sticking to a calorie restricted diet helps with weight loss so transparency about menu data would appear to be a clever idea (the NHS website frequently mentions the importance of this link). There are many apps available to young people to help them track calories so having this information seems to have real value and the data gives full nutritional information, not just calories, so achieving a balanced diet should be easier. The power of social media is great and those restaurants that offer a strong choice for those seeking healthy options are likely to be easy for teens to identify, meaning that they can enjoy a meal out with friends or family without worrying that this will impact their healthy lifestyle. The availability of greater information therefore has the power to create an environment in which young people can find food that is good for them and feel able to relax and enjoy it. It will act as a helpful extension to the existing labelling of foods to identify them as vegan, vegetarian, nut, or gluten free.

At the same time, there is a real worry that labelling food in restaurants so clearly will heighten issues that many teenagers face. For example, we know that counting calories rigidly can lead to an unhealthy relationship with food and control factors are at the heart of many food related illnesses, such as anorexia. To normalise the relationship that we all have with our food, identifying some dishes as Good and some as

Bad is unhelpful; the mind-set that anything is fine in the right context is much more likely to benefit us. And, whilst information about nutrition is available, I worry that social media places so much pressure on us all to be slim and conform to body stereotypes that many teens will ignore data about protein and healthy fats and focus solely on which choice has the fewest calories. We all know that a chicken salad is a great healthy lunch choice but, if a serving of crisps has fewer calories will people end up going to the option that is less good for them?

The new rules also apply only to larger restaurants, with more than 250 employees. Obviously, any café could publish this information, but it seems unlikely that small places would have access to the dieticians who could do the analysis. Teenagers may be drawn to MacDonalds simply because they know how many calories are in a triple cheeseburger rather than eating a healthy chicken burger at the local café because they cannot count the number of calories they consume. Over time, this might lead to fewer small businesses which would be bad for us all, both socially and because change to food habits, such as the rise of vegan eating, begins at a local, customer driven level and not with big corporations.

Making the focus on calories also takes attention away from important food issues such as animal welfare and the environmental impact of food. At a time when the future of our planet is so important, surely making sure that animals are raised kindly and eating seasonally and locally should be more important than measuring kilo joules of energy? I would also highlight the importance of working conditions and staff care which should also be drivers of our decisions about where to eat, and with recent scandals over issues like whether staff get tips, it is obvious that many young people care deeply about the people who cook and serve the food. These areas are much more important than how much fat and calories are in a cheeseburger.

In summary, whilst I understand why the Government have introduced the new rules on nutritional information, I think that the benefits to those who want to be health conscious are outweighed by the problems that may be created for young people suffering from eating disorders and those trying to create a good relationship with food. Also, focusing solely on nutrition takes attention away from other critical issues such as good company staff policies, environmentally conscious food sources and animal abuse. I would like to see teenagers move to a more holistic and balanced approach to eating and this new rule is not helping. I love cooking and eating, and I would rather people shared this passion than reduced a dinner with friends to some scientific statistics.