The Impact of Calories on Menus in England on People with Lived Experience of Eating Disorders
In April 2022, the government introduced new rules so that large businesses (i.e., those with more than 250 employees) need to add calorie information to their menus. Some people with past and current eating disorders, and people who care for them, are worried that this change might make eating disorders worse. To find out more, we are conducting a two-year program of research funded by a NIHR Policy Research Program grant. As part of this project, we have completed a systematic review about the impact of ‘out-of-home’ nutritional labelling, such as calories on menus, on people with eating disorders. This systematic review is currently undergoing peer review at an academic journal. The ‘preprint’ of this review paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, can be read here. Our review highlights mostly negative impacts of ‘out-of-home’ nutritional labelling on people with eating disorders. However, to date, most research has been conducted with people with restrictive eating disorders, and no studies have recruited adolescents. Therefore, there is a need to hear views and experiences from a diverse range of voices. Our grant will involve interviews and a survey to hear from young people and adults with lived experience of eating disorders, as well as parents/carers of people with eating disorders and clinicians working in the eating disorder field.
Aims
The study aims to understand how adolescents and adults with lived experience of eating disorders view calories on menus. We also want to explore the impact of calories on menus on people with eating disorders from the perspectives of parents/carers, as well as from eating disorder clinicians.
Impact
Working with our lived experience advisory board, we will create new resources for people with eating disorders, to help them navigate calories on menus. We will disseminate our findings to policymakers, industry, researchers and people with eating disorders. Based on our findings, we will make recommendations for best practice in terms of out-of-home nutrition labels and eating disorders.
Calories on Menus Study Survey
Our online survey is currently live. We are looking for people with experience of disordered eating or body image concerns (regardless of whether a clinical diagnosis was ever received), based in England, to complete an online survey about views of calories on menus.
For further information and the survey, please click the link below:
Our team
Principal Investigator:
- Dr Tom Jewell (King's College London)
Co-Investigators:
- Ellen Maloney (Peer Researcher, The University of Edinburgh)
- Dr Nora Trompeter (UCL)
- Dr Fiona Duffy (The University of Edinburgh)
- Professor Dasha Nicholls (NHS England)
- Dr Helen Sharpe (The University of Edinburgh)
- Professor Ulrike Schmidt (King's College London/South London and Maudsley NHS Trust)
- Professor Lucy Serpell (UCL)
Research Assistant:
- Abinaya Nadarajah (King's College London)
Principal Investigator
Lecturer in Mental Health Nursing
Investigators
Research Fellow at UCL
Senior Lecturer at Edinburgh University and a Consultant Clinical Psychologist in NHS Lothian CAMHS
Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Imperial College London
Professor of Eating Disorders
Affiliations
Funding
Funding Body: National Institute for Health and Care Research
Amount: £461,022.68
Period: October 2023 - September 2025