Battling the Bulge: Menu board calorie legislation and its potential impact on meal repurchase intentions

Battling the bulge: menu board calories legislation and its potential impact on meal repurchase intentions
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Battling the bulge: menu board calories legislation and its potential impact on meal repurchase intentions
The authors of the article aimed at analyzing whether or not disclosures of nutrient information are essential for an average consumer to identify a meal’s calorific content. They also aimed to address customer motivation to focus on nutrition labels, and finally to assess if such labeling measures could have an influence on the customers’ subsequent behaviors. The findings of their research revealed grave issues that can only be effectively addressed through nutritional disclosures. The results showed that as fat, sodium and calorie levels of meals increases, the consumers’ level of underestimation of nutrients and calories increases (Bates et al., 106). This clearly indicates that in general, customers require the help of nutrition labeling in order to identify the calorie as well as nutritional content of menu items. Moreover, the study revealed that there exists an effect of perceived menu healthfulness on repurchase intentions, and that this effect is strengthened through the disclosure of nutrition information (Bates et al., 106).
From the research, it is can be ascertained that people generally do not have enough nutrition knowledge when it comes to food items that are consumed outside their home. Moreover, when consumers are aware of the nutritional profile of the meals, their purchasing and repurchasing intentions become impacted by the healthfulness of those foods/meal (Bates et al., 107). Therefore, it is imperative that restaurants should observe nutrition and calories labeling on their meal items because this would influence healthier consumer decisions. Restaurant managers should also consider the addition of more healthful items to their existing meals, for instance vegetables and salads that have lower calorie dressings or sauces, or reduce portion sizes of the less healthy food items. This would ensure that meal sizes remains at reasonable levels, but still decreasing the total meal calorie levels.
The number of people who eat from restaurants is increasing each year and this raises the question about the healthfulness of meals prepared outside the home, and consumers need to be aware of the foods that they consume. Calories play a critical role regarding issues that relate to consumers’ weight and are clearly associated to issues such as diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. Thus, it is indispensable for consumers to have awareness of the levels of calories and nutrients when consuming outside-of-home meals. This is because such kinds of diseases could be effectively prevented if individuals made wise and informative decisions with regard to the nutritional content of foods they consume (Bates et al., 104). Restaurants are better positioned to pro...