Showing diners how many calories are in restaurant food items through symbols such as traffic lights coloured green, red and yellow depending on calorie count may influence how much they eat, according to a U.S. study.
That's especially true among the least health-conscious people, said lead author Brenna Ellison, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
"To reach a broader group of diners, a symbolic calorie label may be preferred as it reduced caloric intake across all levels of health consciousness," she and her colleagues wrote in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.
Previous studies have found that people tend to eat less when they are told how many calories are in their food, but scientists had not looked at how that breaks down across different types of diners.
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