Calorie lables mean people lose weight?

UPI Headline:


Calorie counts on menus are helping people lose weight, study says

then you find the details:

"We conducted an experiment with over 5,500 diners in real-world restaurants and found that calorie labels led customers to order 3 percent fewer calories," said study author John Cawley. The drop amounted to about 45 fewer calories consumed per meal. 

 "This was due to reductions in calories ordered as appetizers and entrees," he added, with little change seen in the calorie count of either drinks or desserts...

uh but don't desserts have a lot of calories? Shouldn't they be cutting these out instead of appetizers?

 "In interpreting that, it's important to remember that people will change their behavior when the information is new or surprising," he explained. "People may have already known that desserts are high-calorie and not cut back, but been surprised by the number of calories in appetizers and entrees, and so reduced calories there."

or maybe they cut out the appetizer so they wouldn't feel guilty about eating that calorie filled dessert...


what is not explained: if the 45 calories was in everyone, or if they added up everyone and divided it by the number of people. So a person omitting a high calorie appetizer (say, 1000 calories) but 24 people not doing anthing would amount to an average of 40 calories less per person.

even if this was true for everyone, and everyone cut their calories by 45 calories, how much weight would they lose?

Cawley calculated that over a three-year period, the calorie cut would lead to weight loss in the range of one pound.

assuming they don't go home hungry and then scarf down some potato chips and beer.

a third study was done in real time: with young 30 something white men.

Maybe biased toward the health obsessed?