What do calorie postings really do?

Not long ago, we covered some Tufts University research showing that posted restaurant calorie counts can undershoot the actual number of calories in a dish by as much as 18 percent. This week, I came across a new Stanford University study–based on data collected from Starbucks stores in New York City, where calorie posting has been mandatory for food service chains since 2008–that aimed to determine how consumers fared when they could see how many calories were in their order.

When New York’s calorie posting program first launched, the average customer did, apparently, lighten up, ordering 14 percent fewer calories per food check than before. But as the year progressed, the counts gradually went up–though they still stayed well below other comparable cities such as Boston and Philadelphia, where there we no calorie postings.

Then the holidays set in, and the calorie content of orders shot up. New Yorkers were making the same kinds of orders and choices as people in cities without the posting mandate. The numbers dropped again around January first (and this was interesting: they fell to levels even lower than the April 1 program start date), and the cycle pretty much repeated itself.

So is the program working? When the study first came out, a lot of people used things like the fact that consumers still seemed to eat more around the holidays as an example of calorie posting’s ineffectiveness. I don’t know that you can really say that. Throughout the year, it was pretty clear that people were paying attention to the information; it was how much value they gave it that changed.

And this is in some ways exactly as it should be. Countless studies show that obsessive rule-making around food can be bad for both our minds and our waistlines. I’d be worried if people were adhering to this stuff too strongly–calories aren’t necessarily the be-all-end-all; they’re just part of the picture.

What I’m convinced data posting does more than anything, is make companies more accountable for just how many high calorie ingredients they’re willing to pour into a food. It also shows us that the bran muffin isn’t always the better bet and in some cases–if you’re going to indulge–you might as well treat yourself to the thing you really want. Eat the cookie once knowing what it is, not the muffin every day thinking you’re doing yourself a favor. That, I think, is a pretty delicious outcome.