Australians support nutritional info displays at QSRs: survey
Survey shows 86 percent of Australians are in favour of fast food restaurants including calorie counts on menus.
Nielsen reported:
According to the Nielsen Global Survey, 86% of Australians are in favour of fast food restaurants including calorie counts and nutritional information on menus in some or all instances. This is higher than the worldwide average, with 80 percent of global respondents indicating that fast food restaurants should always or sometimes include calorie information on menus.
However, this contrasts with views around privately owned restaurants, where only 58 percent of Australian respondents feel that calorie count and nutritional information should be listed on menus.
Chris Percy, Managing Director, Nielsen Pacific, commented, “We are seeing a general trend towards people wanting to live healthier lives and being given all of the necessary information to make informed choices, which naturally extends to knowing about the nutritional content of fast food.”
The survey also found that the most popular way for people in Australia to lose weight is to change their diet, so Percy noted that Australians need all of the facts available to be able to make healthier food choices.
“In recent years we’ve seen an increase in healthier options at fast food restaurants. This is only set to increase as companies try to maintain their sales while needing to display nutritional information,” he said.
NSW is the first Australian state to enforce the displaying of nutritional information at QSRs. Meanwhile other states have passed or are reviewing similar legislation including QLD, VIC and SA.
