Healthy Restaurant Destination? Just Think Twice
Hayden
Stewart and Noel
Blisard
Which would you choose if you wanted a healthy
meal—a fast food or full-service restaurant?
Recent survey results show that consumers with less
diet and health knowledge tend to choose a full-service
restaurant, while those with more knowledge are
just as likely to choose a fast food restaurant.
When making choices about where
and how often to eat out, U.S. consumers balance
a number of sometimes competing desires. Consumers
search not only for low prices, but also for taste,
convenience, entertainment, and nutrition when deciding
where to eat. An ERS analysis of a 2002 consumer
survey conducted by Rutgers University finds that
respondents who were more willing to forgo other
food attributes for convenience were about 8 percent
more likely to dine out at least every few days.
Respondents citing convenience as the main factor
influencing their away-from-home food choices were
17 percent more likely to purchase fast food than
were respondents who did not place a premium on
convenience.
Survey respondents looking for
healthful foods were 19 percent more likely to patronize
full-service restaurants (eating places with wait
staff) than fast food outlets. This type of rule-of-thumb
decisionmaking—in this case, methodical avoidance
of fast food—can be a result of limited information.
Market research shows that consumers often develop
decision rules to compensate for an inability to
gather or understand more nuanced information.
In fact, meals and snacks consumed
at full-service restaurants are not necessarily
nutritionally superior to meals purchased at fast
food restaurants. Compared with fast food meals,
full-service meals tend to be higher in fat, cholesterol,
and sodium, though lower in saturated fats. Both
types of eating places offer healthful food choices.
Survey analysis suggests that respondents with better
diet-health knowledge recognize this. When looking
for healthful food, they are equally likely to eat
at fast food or full-service restaurants. This suggests
that informed consumers are better able to navigate
the away-from-home market, while less knowledgeable
ones live by rules of thumb that can be inaccurate.
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