Will posting calories make a difference?

Sometime in 2013, the Affordable Care Act — which mandates menu board calorie postings in chain restaurants — will come into effect.

Americans are set to become more aware of the caloric implications of their restaurant choices.

The idea is that consumers will utilize this information in their dietary decision making; the presumption is that the shock of knowing that their morning low-fat bran muffin contains as many calories as a Quarter Pounder may lead them to question that choice.

The hope is that, as consumer caloric awareness and decision-making increase, the nation’s collective weight might begin to decrease.

The most-established menu-board calorie-labeling program stems from New York City.

Since 2008, restaurants with more than 15 nationwide locations have posted calories.

Preliminary research is fascinating.

Opponents spin the data to highlight that menu calories have a negligible impact on calories consumed and suggest postings are an exercise in nanny-state futility.

Proponents highlight the fact that for the 15 percent of patrons who identified menu board calories as being important to them, the postings led to an average per-meal reduction of 106 fast-food calories.

Regardless of the law’s intent, ultimately what mandatory menu board calories will provide consumers isn’t a ticket to health or a forced hand for choice but rather just simple, identifiable information.

Therefore, the best question to ask is:

Will the provision of caloric information be useful to those who feel they are important?

Data from New York City is quite clear: menu board calories matter to those who care.

If we consider our rising weights to be analogous to a rising, flooding river, menu board calories are but one sandbag, and as Yale’s Dr. David Katz puts it, “To contain a flood, no single sandbag will do.”

Consequently, opponents of the provision of point-of-sale caloric information who point at menuboard calories and state that they’re not going to solve the problem of America’s rising tide of obesity might as well be pointing at a single sandbag and complaining that it doesn’t make a very good levee.

Given that we cannot see, smell or taste the number of calories in our food, providing us with caloric information simply levels a playing field that to date might have had even people who care about calories believing that snacking on low-fat bran muffins during their coffee breaks was a healthful behavior.

That said, there are many more sandbags that we’re going to need to fill if we want to see this tide turn.