Published Aug 18, 2026 | 10:45 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 18, 2026 | 10:45 PM
Researchers pointed to India's 1.3 million diet-linked deaths in 2023 out of 6.9 million deaths from non-communicable disease overall.
Synopsis: An ICMR-led trial involving 2,462 diners in two Chennai restaurant chains found that menu labelling can influence food choices. Icon-based interpretational labels reduced calorie orders by 12%, while contextual and quantitative labels reduced them by 11% and 10%, respectively. The study found limited impact on added sugar and salt.
Restaurants that add nutrition information to their menus can shift what people order, a trial in Chennai shows. The effect grows when the labels rely on icons rather than numbers.
Researchers from the ICMR-National Institute of Epidemiology, ICMR headquarters, the ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition, the Indian Institute of Science and the Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research conducted the study in two restaurant chains. They published their findings in the journal Appetite on 12 August 2026.
“Our randomised controlled trial found that restaurant menu labelling reduced the amount of nutrients of concern ordered, but this reduction was not always statistically significant,” the authors wrote. “In one of the two restaurants studied, all forms of labelling, especially interpretational guidance, contributed to a statistically significant reduction in calories and fat ordered.”
The team recruited 2,462 diners as they left two restaurant chains in Chennai between December 2024 and October 2025. One chain served vegetarian Indian cuisine across four outlets. The other offered vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes across three outlets.
Each participant described what they had eaten during that visit. Staff then showed them one of four menus and asked them to imagine they had just walked in and pick a meal.
The menus split into a control, which matched the restaurant’s usual format, and three labelled versions. One listed calories, protein, fat, sugar and salt for each dish. Another used icons and colour to flag items that crossed nutrient thresholds set out in the Dietary Guidelines for Indians. A third showed how much of a person’s daily recommended intake a dish would use up.
India requires this labelling from restaurants that run at least 10 outlets, or that hold five-star certification, under rules the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India issued in 2022. The researchers tested which format impacted behaviour, and whether the policy achieves what it sets out to do.
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Across both restaurants, diners who saw the icon-based labels ordered meals containing fewer calories than those who saw no labels at all. The numbers-only format and the daily-intake format also brought reductions, though the effect varied by restaurant.
At the multi-cuisine restaurant, orders under the icon format dropped by 224 calories compared with initial orders. The daily-intake format brought a drop of 198 calories, and the numbers-only format a drop of 142 calories.
Compared with the control group, that translated into a 12% reduction for icons, 11% for daily-intake labels, and 10% for numbers alone. Fat followed a similar pattern: diners who saw icon labels at that restaurant ordered meals with 14.3 grams less fat than in their original orders, and the icon group ended up with fat content 6% below the control group.
“The quantum of calorie reduction (∼200 kcal) observed post-intervention in our study, specifically in the second restaurant, is comparable to that reported in previous studies,” the authors noted, pointing to earlier work by Roberto and colleagues and by Auchincloss and colleagues that found similar shifts.
Salt content remained the same. “There were no significant differences in post-intervention salt content between the control group and any of the intervention arms,” the paper stated. Sugar told a mixed story too, and the team ran only descriptive checks on it because so many orders contained none at all.
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At the vegetarian-only chain, the labels were barely registered in the numbers—none of the three formats produced a change in calories that reached statistical significance against the control group.
The researchers pointed to what was on each menu. “Restaurant 1 offered more light-meal options, whereas Restaurant 2 predominantly featured higher-calorie main-course items,” they wrote.
The restaurants’ clientele differed. Diners at the multi-cuisine chain skewed younger, included more women and graduates, ate out more often and spent more per meal than those at the vegetarian chain.
“The impact of the different types of restaurant menu labelling on food choices is dependent on the profile of consumers who use them,” the authors wrote, citing earlier work by Sarink and colleagues. They stopped short of naming the factor, or combination of factors, that drove the split.
“We can only speculate which of these factors, acting alone or in combination with others, could have led to the significant impact of menu labels on the calories ordered,” they noted.
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Awareness ran high across the sample. About 94% of participants said they noticed the nutrition information on the menu, and 63% said it shaped their order.
Ease of understanding varied by format. Numbers scored highest (95%), ahead of icons (85%) and daily-intake percentages (82%).
The authors linked the icon format’s strength partly to that simplicity. “It does not place any literacy requirements on the consumer,” they wrote. “It is also less time-consuming to understand the information on IG labels and factor it into a decision.”
They contrasted it with the demands the numbers-only format places on a diner. “The quantitative method, even when accompanied by a guidance statement on recommended daily allowances, requires the consumer to be aware of calorie requirements and to calculate how well the items they choose meet those requirements.”
The team framed the work as a first for the country and for research on menu labelling from a lower-middle-income setting. “Such research is timely and crucial given the epidemiological transition underway in many of these countries,” they wrote, pointing to India’s 1.3 million diet-linked deaths in 2023 out of 6.9 million deaths from non-communicable disease overall.
Most menu-labelling research comes from wealthier countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. The authors argued that India’s restaurant sector, spanning street vendors, delivery platforms and chain outlets, does not map neatly onto findings from those settings, prompting them to build a trial around Indian dishes, nutrient thresholds and diners.
They flagged the limitations as well. The sample came from two chains in a single city, and participants skewed towards graduates and urban residents. Orders were hypothetical rather than reflecting food actually eaten, since diners chose from the labelled menu after their real meal rather than before it.
“Though the results may not fully reflect real-world food consumption behaviour, they provide the closest approximations within the constraints of our study design,” the authors wrote.
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The paper closed with a push towards flexibility rather than a single mandated format. “Offering multiple label formats based on user preference may improve both usability and the effectiveness of menu labelling across diverse consumer groups,” the authors wrote.
They pointed to scannable and digital menus as one route to that flexibility, letting a diner pick icons, numbers or percentages at the point of ordering rather than restaurants settling on one design for everyone.
They also called for restaurants and regulators to build labels alongside the people who will read them. “They must co-design labels with consumers to ensure they are accurate, informative, inclusive, appealing, and appropriate.”
Beyond design, the authors mentioned a gap that requires further research. “There is also scope for further behavioural research on consumer attributes that influence how the information on menu labels is interpreted and factored into food choices,” they wrote, alongside a longer-term study tracking how the FSSAI’s policy shapes eating-out habits and disease trends across the country.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
