Consumers' Food Selection Affected With Climate Effect Labels on Fast Food Menu

According to a new study, placing climate effect labels on a sample fast food menu changed participants' meal selections in favor of more environmentally friendly goods.

A researcher from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health led the investigation.

For the study, over 5,000 online participants presented a mock fast food menu and were instructed to select a single item for supper.

One group of participants received a menu with non-red meat menu items labeled "low climate impact," such as chicken sandwiches, while another group received a menu with red meat items labeled "high climate impact," such as burgers.

A third control group received menus with QR codes on all items but no climate labels.

Climate impact labels on sample fast food menus had a strong effect on food selection

(Photo : amirali mirhashemian/Unsplash)

When compared to the control group, both the high and low-climate-impact labels significantly reduced red meat selections, with the high-impact labels having the most effect, as per ScienceDaily.

In comparison to the control group, menus with a "high climate effect" designation on burgers boosted non-beef selections by 23%.

Menus with "low climate effect" labeling raised non-beef options such as a chicken sandwich or a salad by roughly 10% more participants than the control group.

The report was published online in JAMA Network Open on December 27.

These findings imply that menu labeling, particularly labels informing customers that an item has a significant environmental impact, can be a useful technique for encouraging more sustainable food choices in a fast food scenario.

Using menu labeling to promote healthy and sustainable food alternatives has long been considered a viable strategy.

Wolfson and her co-authors intended to see if communicating the climate change consequences of fast restaurant menu items would cause individuals to eat less red meat.

Consumption of red meat has been associated with health issues such as colorectal cancer, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and other disorders.

Because beef production is the major source of greenhouse gas emissions in the food and agricultural sector, reducing red meat consumption would also assist to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which would help to minimize climate change.

The survey involved 5,049 people from around the country and ran from March 30 to April 13, 2022.

Green "low climate effect" labels appeared on vegetarian, chicken, and fish menu choices. All beef burger options had "high climate impact" labeling that was red.

The authors created the high/low effect climate classifications based on evidence indicating beef has a higher climate impact than other proteins.

In addition to selecting a supper entrée, participants were asked to judge how nutritious they believed the meal they ordered was.

Participants who chose a more sustainable (i.e., non-beef) item considered their decision to be healthier than those who chose a beef item, regardless of the type of label on the menu saw.

The Nutritional Profiling Index was employed by the researchers to assess the healthfulness of the sample menu items.

The Index rates the healthfulness of foods on a scale of 100, with 64 being deemed healthy.

The researchers discovered that the "high climate impact" label group performed somewhat better than the control group and the "low climate impact" group.

However, none of the menu items received a high enough score to be declared ideally healthy.

While the findings are promising overall, they imply that favorably framed "low climate impact" labels are less helpful in encouraging sustainable food choices than "high climate impact" ones.

Read more: Watch Out For These 5 Key Changes on Food Labels

Do eco-labels on menus influence sustainable food choices?

It is estimated that livestock production contributes 14.5% of human-induced global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as per Food Navigator.com.

With rising global populations, demand for protein is predicted to skyrocket - animal-derived protein alone is expected to treble by 2050.

It has been stated that customers are generally uninformed of how their diet might harm the environment.

Eco-labeling, which may offer information on water and land use as well as GHG emissions, is one method of educating customers about the environmental consequences of their diet.

The University of Bristol, UK, conducted research to see if using eco-friendly ratings on menu items encourages consumers to make environmentally responsible selections.

When the eco-labels were included, 5% more of the 1,399 adult participants chose the vegetarian choice, while 17% chose vegetarian or chicken - the second most sustainable option.

Meanwhile, one-third of those who were given a 'control' menu with neither social push nor eco-label chose the beef burrito.

This fell to 29% for those who received the social nudge menu, and even lower for those who received the eco-labeled meal.

"Adding a traffic light eco-label to menus enhanced the selection of more sustainable food choices," lead author Katie De-loyde, research associate in Psychological Science, explained.

Further, and rather unexpectedly, participants were pleased about the eco-label, with a whopping 90% backing the notion.

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