Guidelines for fast food drinks?

The recent Institute of Medicine recommendation that companies advertise only healthy food choices to children takes a heavy-handed approach to stemming the nation's obesity crisis, maintains Richard Staelin, a professor in Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, Durham, N.C. His research has demonstrated that fast-food companies could reduce their consumers' caloric intake while maintaining profits simply by increasing the assortment of drink sizes they sell.

Instead of legislating advertising of food to children, Staelin recommends that Congress institute a set of guidelines for the fast-food industry similar to the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards established for automobiles.

"If Congress gave fast-food companies the directive to reduce their customers' overall caloric intake by 10%, our research indicates companies could do that without decreasing profits," Staelin declares. "Over time, this would amount to a significant calorie savings and would be a step in combating our obesity crisis."

Staelin and his colleagues varied the sizes of drinks they offered to participants in an experiment and found that individuals tend to order drinks based, not on volume, but on where each size fell within the range of offerings. People tend to avoid the smallest and largest sizes and instead select the middle choice. When 12-ounce soft drinks were available, many individuals ordered 16-ounce drinks; when 12-ounce drinks were removed from the menu and 16-ounce drinks were the smallest available, many participants who previously had ordered 16-ounce drinks increased to a 21-ounce cup. Likewise, those who initially bought the 21-ounce drink moved up to 32 ounces when it was the middle choice and 42-ounces was the largest option.

"Both of these behaviors are examples of what is called extremeness aversion," Staelin explains. "People don't want to order either the smallest or the largest sizes offered, no matter what those sizes are."

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