The list of strategies used to tackle child obesity is never-ending. Now academics at the University of Birmingham have found that placing healthier meals at the top of restaurant menus encourages teenagers to order them.

The study has shown that intervention in the presentation of restaurant menus led to a reduction in calorie intake ‘from 1104.17 kcal to 1045.16 kcal’.  Although the potential for this intervention to eradicate childhood and teenage obesity is slim, the study has seen success in examining our psychological process when ordering food.  Whether this strategy can be explained by customers assuming the meal at the top of the menu is the most popular or the most recommended by the restaurant or if we lose interest after the top 3 options, it is unclear whether this strategy would be more effective than simply including calory intake on menus.  

26.8% of children aged 2 to 15 were overweight or obese in 2022/23. Clearly, childhood and teenage obesity need to be an issue at the forefront of the government agenda.  Although placing the least calorific options at the top of the menu may influence meal choice, generalising a study that focuses on sit-down restaurant meals to the average teenage diet is regressively applicable and so is unrealistic.  Childhood obesity in particular has been proven to disproportionately affect those from the most deprived areas, for example, for children in Year 6 (ages 10-11), 13.1% living in the least deprived areas were obese, compared with 30.1% in the most deprived areas.  

Arguably instead, the focus of studies tackling childhood obesity should be the food culture in the UK, which is increasingly centred around quick and easy processed food.  Ultra-processed food makes up 65% of our children’s diet in the UK.  Reliance on this type of food can negatively affect an individual’s health later in life and has been linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.  Of course, reliance on quick and easy processed food is found disproportionately in more deprived areas where parents may work longer hours and have limited resources or money to cook well-rounded meals.

So, what’s the solution?  Education on the benefits of healthy food can only go so far.  We all understand that eating ‘calorific meals’ is bad for our health. More education on how to find and make healthy meals would be a benefit for young children, especially as they gain more independence.  There is also a clear economic element here so tackling relative deprivation is likely to consequently affect this issue. 

An overarching theme here is our food culture.  Tackling the tendency to turn to quick and easy ultra-processed food and fast-food retailers, and promoting cheap healthy meals, for example, by advertising simple recipes in our supermarkets and potentially creating healthier takeaway options, would have a significant impact on our perception of food and consequently our health.

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