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AbstractConsumers often form calorie estimates. How consumers estimate calories can systematically bias their calorie assessments. We distinguish between magnitude estimates—when consumers judge whether something has "very few" to "many" calories—and numeric estimates—when consumers estimate a number of calories. These two estimation modes lead to calorie estimate reversals when assessing calories in stimuli that trade off type and quantity, such as when assessing calories in a smaller portion of unhealthy food versus a larger portion of healthier food. When forming a "magnitude estimate," people judge the larger, healthier food portion as containing fewer calories than the smaller, unhealthy food portion. However, when forming a "numeric estimate," people often come to the opposite conclusion—judging the larger, healthier food portion as having more calories. This reversal occurs because these two estimation modes are differentially sensitive to information regarding a stimulus' type (e.g., food healthiness), which is processed first, and quantity (e.g., food portion size), which is processed secondarily. Specifically, magnitude estimates are more sensitive to type, whereas numeric estimates attend to both type and quantity. Accordingly, this divergence between calorie estimation modes attenuates when: (1) quantity information is made primary or (2) in an intuitive (vs. deliberative) mindset.

As of January 1, 2017, the Healthy Menu Choices Act mandates that food service premises with 20 or more locations in Ontario must display the number of calories in every food item sold on menus. The impetus for this legislation was to enable Ontarians to become aware of the calorie content of foods and beverages consumed outside the home, and make healthier dietary choices while dining out. Though arising as an initiative to attenuate the development of obesity and current obesity rates, evidence suggests menu labelling does not significantly alter individuals' food choices. Moreover, focusing primarily on caloric content may be an ineffective, and perhaps detrimental, strategy to effect change in the obesity epidemic. Beyond the initiative's questionable utility, there has been a lack of consideration as of yet to the unintended negative implications this initiative may have on eating disorder (ED) symptomatology in the general population and those attempting to recover from an ED. The objective of the current commentary is thus to argue that in light of evidence of minimal benefit and the potential for harm, nutrition labelling on menus may be a misguided public health initiative.

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. We study the impact of mandatory calorie posting on consumers' purchase decisions, using detailed data from Starbucks. We find that average calories per transaction falls by 6 %. The effect is almost entirely related to changes in consumers' food choices--there is almost no change in purchases of beverage calories. There is no impact on Starbucks profit on average, and for the subset of stores located close to their competitor Dunkin Donuts, the effect of calorie posting is actually to increase Starbucks revenue. Survey evidence and analysis of commuters suggest the mechanism for the effect is a combination of learning and salience"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Ageing causes loss of function in tissues and organs, is accompanied by a chronic inflammatory process and affects life- and healthspan. Calorie restriction (CR) is a non-genetic intervention that prevents age-associated diseases and extends longevity in most of the animal models studied so far. CR produces a pleiotropic effect and improves multiple metabolic pathways, generating benefits to the whole organism. Among the effects of CR, modulation of mitochondrial activity and a decrease in oxidative damage are two of the hallmarks. Oxidative damage is reduced by the induction of endogenous antioxidant systems and modulation of the peroxidability index in cell membranes. Mitochondrial activity changes are regulated by inhibition of IGF-1 and Target of Rapamycin (TOR)-dependent activities and activation of AMP-dependent kinase (AMPK) and the sirtuin family of proteins. The activity of PGC-1α and FoxO is regulated by these systems and is involved in mitochondria biogenesis, oxidative metabolism activity and mitochondrial turnover. The use of mimetics and the regulation of common factors have demonstrated that these molecular pathways are essential to explain the effect of CR in the organism. Finally, the anti-inflammatory effect of CR is an interesting emerging factor to be taken into consideration. In the present revision we focus on the general effect of CR and other mimetics in longevity, focusing especially on the cardiovascular system and skeletal muscle. ; The research group is funded by the Andalusian Government grant BIO177 (FEDER funds of European Commission). Research has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness grant DEP2012-39985. ; Peer Reviewed