ABSTRACT

The study is focused on nutritional labelling of restaurant menu and customer’s choice of restaurant. Nutritional labelling is the practice of providing information about calories, fat, sodium, or other selected nutrients in menu items at point of purchase, nutritional labelling is one strategy in a broad spectrum of efforts to reduce rates of obesity and diet-related chronic diseases all over the world. Since many people all over the world consume food away from home, access to nutrition information at point of food and beverage purchases may help consumers make healthier choices.  Menu labelling regulations for chain restaurants, usually in the form of calorie information at the point of purchase, have been adopted by many countries especially the developed and developing countries. Menu labels can appear on menu boards, food tags (cards with nutritional information placed next to food items in display cases or cafeteria lines) or printed menus. The significant growth in food labelling does not, itself, give consumers the knowledge to make informed choices. Without a clear understanding of how this information can improve one’s health, the advantages are lost. Nutritional labelling on restaurant menus is more likely to be accepted in popular restaurant and fast food establishments where consumers eat regularly and predominantly for sustenance and, where such information is available. Similar schemes in fine-dining restaurants, may be viewed less favorably by customers. No labelling system or legislation can control the choices made by individuals and therefore the responsibility to select nutritional balance food is personal. The difficulties of standardization and the high costs involved in providing precise nutritional information suggest it would difficult for small businesses to achieve and these may be put at risk of closure if forced to calculate nutritional values. Without an appropriate, holistic, restaurant nutritional labelling system, there appears to be little point in the hospitality industry endeavoring to provide information which many customers may ignore or not understand. Based on this conclusion, the study recommends that fast food restaurants have to put more effort on encouraging customers   to use nutritional labeling by making the label more accessible and in a user friendly format. Also restaurants should ensure that their menu is labelled in such a way that customers can actually know the content of the food. This is because some customers have health issue that would deprive them of eating some foods. The study further recommends that nutritional labelling should be compulsory for every fast food and restaurants. That would give customers more confident in consuming the food having known the content of the food.