Jonathan Wilhoite Blog: Health Labels Looking To Alter Online Ordering Habits

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Health Labels Looking To Alter Online Ordering Habits

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From getting a taxi to ordering food, people begin to develop online ordering habits that make it easy for anyone having a smartphone or laptop computer- anywhere and everywhere.

New innovations may further spur online ordering habits

Making good food choices or knowing food nutritional values may be as simple as looking at your phone screens and can even help you count calories. This after the Food and Drug Administration activates the new calorie labeling regulations that will take effect this spring.

The plan is to let people know how much calories they can have with the click of a button on a food item of their fancy, as some companies like Starbucks have already started to join in the calorie count bandwagon.

What you know won’t hurt you

A collaborative study by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon University reveals that there is a positive effect on people to know how much calories they have in their diet and these are good reasons for inspiring them to eat healthy.

Study lead Eric VanEpps a graduate student from Carnegie Mellon University says that they wanted to focus on the idea whether people can make healthful online choices for food if the nutrition values inform them about the calorie content of each food item in the menu.

“Calorie labels can be really helpful,” says VanEpps. “We have what we think of as healthy categories like salad. But not every salad is healthier than every sandwich.”

The researchers said they already have an idea about some restaurants devising a visual representation of colour coded labels that help people distinguish food items that are healthful with green, less healthful with yellow and not-so-healthful with red.

High tech online menu study

The researchers teamed up with a health insurance firm based in Kentucky to develop an online meal ordering system for their employees and over the course of six weeks, people were given options to choose their food on a website for pickup, instead of waiting in queue at the cafeteria.

All of the users, numbering close to 250, saw ‘traffic coded’ menus with the exact calorie counts and those without labels.

Their study reveals that users who used the online menus with colour-coded calorie counts ordered 10 percent lower calorie content compared to those who were not provided with the colour coded menus or access to their food’s health information.

The researchers are hopeful that someday, they may be able to see people’s online ordering habits be able to clear the way for more healthful and wise food choices.

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