Last week I was interviewed by a local news reporter covering the story of Holy Chicken, a new fast food restaurant created by Morgan Spurlock, director of the documentary Super Size Me, which opened its first location in central Ohio on Saturday. Given Spurlock’s history with the fast food industry, it was ironic that he was choosing to open a restaurant of his own. In the documentary, Spurlock ate exclusively fast food for an entire month and suffered the health consequences of doing so. Given that experience, the reporter wanted to know “Is fast food getting healthier?”
Spurlock marketed his restaurant concept as a healthier alternative to other chicken restaurants, using phrases such as “natural”, “free-range” and “made with integrity”. According to a Columbus Dispatch article covering the restaurant opening, though, the tables in Holy Chicken were decorated with informational cards describing how the chickens used at the restaurant were more or less identical to industrial chickens. Additionally, Spurlock was quoted describing how restaurant chains continue to sell the same food they always have, but always with improved marketing and spin.
When restaurants use certain words to promote their menu items, customers tend to think they are eating healthier when that is not necessarily the case. Researchers Brian Wansink and Pierre Chandon of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab have coined this phenomenon the “health halo effect”. When a restaurant claims to be healthy, consumers underestimate the calorie content of its food. Many consumers compensate for choosing “healthy” options by rewarding themselves with higher calorie beverages, side dishes and desserts.
Similarly, consumers believe that items labeled “organic” are healthier than their conventional counterparts. In another study from the Food and Brand Lab, Wansink and colleagues conducted an experiment with 115 New Yorkers and found that when consumers tasted identical pairs of organic cookies and yogurt- one of each pair containing a label and the other unlabeled- they estimated a lower calorie content for the labeled cookies and yogurt and also described each labeled item as tasting “lower in fat”. The items were exactly the same, but the wording on the label was powerful enough to alter perceptions. 
The takeaway here is that fast food restaurants and food manufacturers will use all kinds of creative wording to market their products. If you have a true interest in choosing healthier items at the grocery store or in the restaurant, look for the nutrition information contained in restaurant menus or on a nutrition facts panel to guide your decisions rather than relying on health claims and trendy buzzwords.
