We should be very wary of calorie food labelling

Friday September 16, 2011

The decision by McDonald’s to label their menus with calorie information will just encourage further regulation of the food and restaurant trades, warns Martin Cullip

Despite no great clamour from the public – or their own customers – McDonald’s have rolled out calorie information on menus in all their 1,200 diners. As one would expect, the move has been accompanied by a blaze of media publicity, and opinion aplenty.

However, rather than being lauded for their voluntary action as part of the government’s Public Health Responsibility Deal, the reaction has been very much muted. Writing in The Guardian, Mark King asked “is there really any point?”, while academics were of the opinion that there would be a negligible impact on health as a result.

They’re right to be cynical. Studies conducted in the USA where menu labelling has been in operation for some time in many jurisdictions show that giving calorific information makes little difference to consumer food choices, if at all. In January, the Seattle-area public health department found no statistically significant impact on the amount of calories purchased in the thirteen months that followed mandatory calorie labelling and, in February, New York University found much the same when comparing food receipts in areas subject to legislation to those where there was no information provided.

It could be that health advocates – who have been crying out for menu labelling for many years – are underwhelmed by the evidence and are now being more cautious. But a recent investigation into takeaway dishes by the Local Government Association led to the inevitable call for the same labelling as a way of counteracting poor choices.

If it is now accepted that requiring restaurants to provide calorie counts is ineffectual in the battles health lobbyists choose to engage in, why is the policy still pursued with such vigour?

From a freedom point of view, more consumer information can never be a bad thing, though the calorie assessment and menu design costs can discriminate against smaller operators. But one suspects that the issue of labelling is merely a stepping stone on the path to the greater goal of being able to order the food industry about.

A recurring theme from the health lobby in commentary surrounding the McDonald’s initiative was that labelling should be accompanied by reductions in salt, fat, and sugar content in their food. Again, there is no great appetite for this from those who frequent McDonald’s restaurants, or any other food operator for that matter. If there were, companies large and small are perfectly capable of adjusting their menus accordingly in a free market, and will stand or fall by the quality of their decisions.

By successfully manoeuvring chains like McDonald’s into a situation where they feel obliged to provide calorie information – despite research showing that it is irrelevant to the vast majority of their customers – the health lobby has established a beachhead in the longer game of changing the menus of private businesses whether they, or the people who buy from them, like it or not.

No-one is under any illusion when they buy a Big Mac, or a Chinese takeaway, that they are eating healthily. The public are more able than government admits to assess their own requirements and act accordingly. Yet the transparent objective of those solely dedicated to eradication of all but perfectly healthy food is to intervene in our choices, even if it means bullying private businesses and denying us all the little pleasures we freely choose for ourselves.

McDonald’s may feel that they have pulled off a bit of a coup here. They can point to their responsibility in providing information, while quietly congratulating themselves that – should labelling become mandatory – they are better placed than most of their competitors to weather the increased burden of cost. In some ways, those who despise global burger chains in the UK have unwittingly strengthened their hand.

But at the same time, McDonald’s have implicitly marked themselves out as guilty. Their products are viewed as toxic by health campaigners and, by giving this concession, they only invite their detractors to lobby for further measures and intrusions into their business, thereby driving a coach and horses through free choice and market-based supply.

Menu labelling is a pretty neutral doffed cap to health concerns, and on balance carries a marginal benefit for free choice. It’s the threat it brings with it that may cause problems in the future.