Warning labels could help customers identify hidden sugar in restaurant menus

Seeing a warning icon on a restaurant menu may help consumers identify the high amounts of added sugar hidden in menu items -- and it may even convince them to reach for healthier items like water, say researchers.

The following article was posted by: Karen Michele Nikos-Rose University of California - Davis | Science Daily Website
Titled: Warning labels could help customers identify hidden sugar in restaurant menus
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220606181209.htm
Article Posted: June 6, 2022

The key take-aways from the article are as follows:

• Article by UC Davis showing the affects of having warning labels with menu items showing the amount of sugar in the menu item
• The study, published online in the July issue of the journal Preventive Medicine, is believed to be the first of its kind to design and test the effects of added-sugar warnings for restaurant menus
• Seeing a warning icon on a restaurant menu may help consumers identify the high amounts of added sugar used in menu items
• They used different warning icons next to menu items showing sugar levels (high, low etc) and the simple icons were better than using text
• Icons where easy to understand and 80% of the participants in the study supported the added-sugar warning labels being used on restaurant menus to help make better decisions

This article correlates to our previous article about food tracing technology: RFID technology tested by Chipotle to improve food traceability

Costmenu can help restaurant owners address the concerns noted above as we provide the following solutions:

Costmenu allows its users to create nutrition labels.

Costmenu provides for simple nutritional labels that show the total calorie count as well as the percentage breakdown of the calories by ingredients. These simple labels can be created with a single click of the prepared item and the labels are converted into PNG (image formats) so that they can be printed or applied as needed. In addition, more detailed nutrition labels can also be sources through links on the application as well.

Compare different prepared or menu items against each other to determine the amount of sugar.

Costmenu allows users to compare different ingredient usages, amounts and percentages such as such as sugar so that there is a clear indication as to how much is being used. This can be powerful information when needing to adjust the amount of an ingredient is being used.

Food item usage features by Costmenu.

Costmenu's features are very affordable and will help provide the insight in order to make informed decisions on menu pricing, ingredient usage, and where to cut costs or amounts used. Our system will pay for itself with the just information gleaned from analytics. If Costmenu can help provide insight into your menu items you can then make adjustments where needed to help with the overall health of your menu items.

About Costmenu:
Costmenu is a food/menu/recipe costing software that offer many advantages over excel spreadsheets and other inventory management programs. Costmenu integrates a powerful dashboard, food, prepared, and menu item costing features, menu building features, custom qr code label makers, document storage, event/catering management features, data security, performance measurement, data analysis and comparisons, CRM, and generation of various reports. For more information on Costmenu, visit https://costmenu.com, email sales@costmenu.com, or phone (949) 274-4814.