With the passing of a law requiring some restaurants to display the caloric information of their food products, a UF survey shows most adults still do not know how many calories they actually need.
The menu labeling law is part of the Affordable Care Act, said Lauren Headrick, lead author of a paper about the survey.
The law requires restaurants with 20 or more chains or 20 or more vending machines to show the calories in each item on their menus.
“We wanted to gauge whether or not the info on the menu would be useful,” Headrick said.
The UF survey of 978 people of varying height and weight found adults overwhelmingly underestimated the amount of calories they need daily to maintain their current weight.
“What we hypothesized was that obese individuals would overestimate their calorie needs the most,” said Michelle Zitt, a UF nutritional sciences doctorate student who conducted the survey with three other students. “We found just the opposite.”
She said people who diet underestimated their caloric needs even more because of the focus on calorie counting, which overlooks other important aspects of nutrition.
Researchers were surprised to find that health professionals and students in health-related majors were no more educated on their caloric needs than other adults.
“Across the board, people underestimated their energy requirement,” Headrick said.
Zitt blamed diet culture and a lack of nutritional education for adults misunderstanding their nutritional needs.
“It’s not that we think that labeling on the menus is a bad idea,” she said. “We just think it’s important to educate people so they can use that and the menu labeling to make decisions.”
A version of this story ran on page 4 on 11/5/2013 under the headline "Adults underestimate calorie counts"
