Tiny Label on Fast-Food Menu Changed Orders for Thousands, Study Shows

6:05 AM ETDeveloping

Science Desk

In Short: A study found that a simple climate label on a fast-food menu influenced the choices of over 10,000 participants, potentially reducing the environmental impact of their meals.

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Researchers conducted an online randomized clinical trial with over 10,000 US adults to test the effectiveness of different climate labels on fast-food menu items.

The menu, modeled after a popular US fast-food chain, included a variety of options such as beef burgers, chicken, fish, salads, and a plant-based burger.

Participants were shown six different types of climate labels, including an environmental cost expressed in dollars, a climate grade, and a 'high climate impact' label.

The study found that the climate grade and high-climate-impact labels were more effective at reducing high-impact menu selections among those who were more concerned about climate change.

Even small changes in labeling could potentially avoid millions of higher-impact fast-food meals each day, given that about a third of US adults eat fast food on a given day.

What's still developing

The environmental cost label translated emissions into a dollar amount but didn't necessarily tell people whether that number was good or bad (and it was in a smaller black-and-white font), so it may have been easy to ignore.
The researchers note that previous nutrition-label research suggests additional context can aid interpretation.
Then they randomly assigned participants to see one of the labels.
The other five groups saw different kinds of climate information on the labels.
One label showed an environmental "cost" for the menu item expressed in dollars, another showed a climate grade, a third showed a climate grade accompanied by a scale showing all possible grades, a fourth was simply a "high climate impact" label on high-greenhouse-gas-emission menu items (and no label on other foods), and a fifth had a "warning high climate impact" label.

Sources

ScienceAlertlink