Poll shows Americans back menu labeling

More than half of Americans say they already have enough information at restaurants to decide whether they are making a healthy purchase. But they want even more.

According to an Associated Press-GfK poll conducted in December, most Americans favor labeling calories on menus at fast-food and sit-down restaurants. Most favor labels for prepared foods at grocery stores, too.

The poll was conducted a little more than a week after the Food and Drug Administration announced new rules that will require restaurants and other establishments that sell prepared foods and have 20 or more locations to post the calorie content of food “clearly and conspicuously” on their menus, menu boards and displays. Companies will have until November to comply.

Most Americans — 56 percent — favor requiring fast-food restaurants to put calorie counts on menus, 54 percent favor doing so at sit-down restaurants, and 52 percent favor the labels at prepared-food counters at grocery stores.

Slightly fewer respondents approve of requiring calorie postings in other dining locations. Forty-nine percent of Americans support posting calories on coffee shop menus, and 44 percent back postings on vending machines and at movie theaters. Forty-three percent favor postings at amusement parks.

All those establishments will be required to post calories under the FDA rules.

Only about 1 in 10 Americans opposes labeling requirements at each of these places. The rest said they neither favor nor oppose each requirement.

The idea behind the new rules is that people may skip that bacon double cheeseburger if they know it has hundreds of calories — and, in turn, restaurants may make their foods healthier to keep calorie counts down. The menus and menu boards will tell diners that a 2,000-calorie diet is used as the basis for daily nutrition, noting that individual needs may vary.

Additional nutritional information beyond calories, including sodium, fats, sugar and other items, must be available on request.

In the poll, women were likelier to say they favor labeling requirements at restaurants and prepared-food counters, though a majority of men support the labeling at fast-food restaurants and around half support it at sit-down restaurants. College-educated respondents were likelier to favor labeling requirements at all the establishments.

When they’re judging whether a food is a healthy choice, 55 percent of Americans say the calorie count is very or extremely important. The same goes for sodium levels.

Sugar and fat were slightly more important to health-conscious diners — 61 percent said sugar was very or extremely important when deciding on healthy purchases and 59 percent said the same about fat.

Only 36 percent of Americans said they feel the level of vitamins and minerals is extremely or very important when making healthy purchases, and even fewer — 23 percent — said the same about whether an item is organic. Women and people in urban areas were most likely to make organic food a priority.

Even though most favor more calorie labeling, Americans say they already have enough information to decide whether they are making healthy purchases.

Sixty percent say they now have enough nutrition information at sit-down restaurants and 56 percent say they do at fast-food restaurants.

Around a third say they don’t have enough information to decide whether they are making a healthy purchase in any of those places.

Congress required the menu labels as part of the health overhaul in 2010. The FDA has said they are just one way to combat obesity, since Americans eat and drink about one-third of their calories away from home.

Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner of foods, said the agency knows the public has a strong interest in labeling.

“It’s not a magic wand, but it will help people make better choices about their diets,” he said.

The AP-GfK poll of 1,010 adults was conducted online Dec. 4-8, using a sample drawn from GfK’s probability-based KnowledgePanel, which is designed to represent the U.S. population. The margin of error for all respondents is 3.4 percentage points.

This story was originally published December 31, 2014 at 4:21 PM with the headline "Poll shows Americans back menu labeling."