Premium
The Fat “Value”: How Fat‐Related Words in Chain Restaurants Menu Bias Expectations
Author(s) -
Wansink Brian,
Mukund Anupama,
Velez Argumedo Catalina M.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.31.1_supplement.957.12
Subject(s) - calorie , caloric theory , advertising , meal , value (mathematics) , nutrition labeling , psychology , marketing , food science , mathematics , business , statistics , medicine , chemistry , endocrinology
The numerous words used to name a plate on a restaurant's menu do more than arouse your gourmet imagination; they may carry calories. In some circumstances, it is apparently easy for a customer to determine the healthier option when comparing dishes in a restaurants menu. This research focus to understand how descriptive menu words used in chain restaurants could have specific caloric values ascribed to them. For this study, 12 of 342 words were analyzed, from 18614 mentions in 66 restaurant chains' menu dish titles. These words were nutrition based and averaged in caloric content using menu restaurant words presented on MenuStat. In a secondary stage the group of words was estimated by health professionals via a questionnaire to determine if their estimations were accurate in relation to actual caloric values. Results showed that words pertaining to fat and lighter meals had lower averages of actual caloric value ( p = .000). Almost the 12 words were overestimated by the health professionals except for “low carb”, which was significantly underestimated. Typical guests may have similar estimations to health professionals, and perhaps even more skewed interpretations. Since many customers look to quantified elements of dishes when deciding on healthy meal choices, such as the amount of carbohydrates found in a meal, guests could be consuming dishes that are seemingly healthy but are in reality packing on extra pounds.