A recent study by the University of Birmingham and Aston University found that placing low-calorie meals at the top of menus encourages teenagers to opt for healthier choices, offering a promising intervention for tackling adolescent obesity.
A new study conducted by the University of Birmingham and Aston University has discovered that arranging lower-calorie meal options at the top of restaurant menus and reducing the availability of high-calorie items can significantly influence teenagers to make healthier eating choices.
Childhood obesity has been on the rise annually, despite governmental efforts and targets to curb the trend. For adolescents, who often find themselves eating out with friends, restaurants constitute a critical dietary environment. According to recent findings published in the journal Appetite, strategically positioning menu items could be a pivotal tool in addressing this public health challenge.
“Childhood obesity is a significant public health challenge. A key period for targeting dietary intervention is adolescence, when young people become more independent, making their own decisions about diet and socializing with friends more,” Katie Edwards, a research fellow in psychology at the University of Birmingham who led the study, said in a news release. “Interventions have targeted healthy eating at home and at school, but we wanted to see how altering restaurant menus can impact the choices teenagers make.”
The research team engaged 432 adolescents, aged 13-17, in an online experiment where they were presented with various restaurant menus. Each menu included five starters, 10 main courses and five desserts.
The menus were organized in different ways: one reduced high-calorie options, one arranged meals from lowest to highest calorie, one combined both availability and position interventions, and one followed a typical menu.
The participants had to select a starter, main course and dessert from each menu.
The results showed significant reductions in calorie selection when menus were manipulated.
The meals chosen from menus arranged from least to most calorific averaged 1992.13 calories, compared to 2099.78 calories from typical menus.
The availability intervention demonstrated a decrease from 2134.26 to 1956.18 calories, and the combined interventions led to an even more remarkable drop from 2173.60 to 1884.44 calories.
Edwards also noted how menu positioning had the greatest impact on main course selections, reducing average calories from 1104.17 to 1045.16.
Meanwhile, the availability intervention had a notable impact on starter selections, though neither intervention significantly affected dessert choices.
Co-corresponding author James Reynolds, a senior lecturer in psychology at Aston University, emphasized the implications of these findings.
“People tend to consume higher calorie meals when they eat out, so restaurants provide an important location for implementing low-cost and high-reach interventions which can encourage healthier eating in teenagers,” he said in the news release. “Many restaurants are already required to display calorie information on their menus, but our research has shown that tactics like altering the position or availability of high calorie options on menus could also be a useful tool in trying to reduce obesity and help young people make healthier choices. The next step for this research would be to replicate the study in restaurant settings.”
With adolescence being a critical period for establishing lifelong eating habits, these insights provide a promising direction for public health interventions aimed at reducing obesity rates among teenagers. Implementing these simple yet effective changes in restaurant menus could pave the way for a healthier future generation.