Label the Meals: Essay

Topics:	Eating HabitsNutritionPerspective
Words:	555
Page:	1 This essay sample was donated by a student to help the academic community. Papers provided by EduBirdie writers usually outdo students' samples.

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Eating outside of the home is now a popular habit. Many of us need to eat outside due to our daily activities, and others eat outside because they find it to be a practical way to save time and energy. However, the food you find outside your home is most cases unhealthy due to the nutritional content they contain. The majority of the time the food we eat outside provides us with more calories and nutrients than our body needs (Frazzo,1998; Lin, Guthrie & Frazao, 1999). For that reason, providing nutrition information through menu labeling has been identified as an important key to telling the population what they are actually eating. Ironically, the industries of food service have always been worried about labeling their food because they feel fear to have a decrease in their profits.(Almanza, Nelson, & Chai, 1997: Glanz et al., 2007).However, in America, all restaurants with more than twenty locations need to provide the energy content of their menus under certain conditions.

In the article “Investigating the Impact of Menu Labeling in Revenue and Profit in a Foodservice Operation” a study was done with the purpose of investigating if labeling the menu in two different ways would make a distinction in the way people buy food and at the same time to see if those changes have a significant economic effect in the food industry. The study was held in a hospital cafeteria where ten locations offering different types of food were the target, and the researchers implemented four types of conditions such as simple labeling, complex labeling (which the Cafeteria was already using), and two types of places of the menu label on the countertop and on the floor menu. The results of the study have a large significance because it will help the food services industry to understand the real effects of menu labeling, at the same time it will provide the food industry with the tools needed to implement and develop new strategies to improve their profits at the same time that they provide to all consumer the nutrition information of the food they are about to consume.

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The study was conducted for 23 weeks, and after analyzing all data they conclude that among all the conditions in the study the changes made to the labeling menu were not significant in the demand for those foods, and at the same, the profits and revenue did not have significant changes. Furthermore, making a menu with simple labels easy to read can help the food industry to increase the satisfaction of the customers (Cranage, 2004) and will potentially increase the opportunities of having more financial growth for all food services. In my opinion, customers are becoming more aware of what they are eating, and labeling food represents an excellent way to help society to make smart decisions about what to buy. Foodservices should take this as an opportunity for growth in the food industry. In addition, food services should always include fresh produce alternatives in their menus because this will be the new form to make more money. This does not mean that fast food needs to be banned. Everyone will have the same freedom to choose what they want to eat but is only a great opportunity for all food services to expand their menu with fresh and healthy options available for all the population.

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