Data analysis of previous research found that longer delays between placing an order and picking up the meal are associated with reductions in calorie content.
In support of this finding, a second experiment which deliberately delayed lunch orders, lead to a marginally significant reduction in calories among delayed orders.
Additional research, which compared orders for immediate consumption, when compared to orders placed in advance, demonstrated a significant (100 calorie, or approximately 10%) reduction in lunch calories.
Results from this study provide further insights in to consumer behaviour as well as the implication that weight and overall health can be managed merely by placing advance orders at meal times or even pre-preparing meals.
Online and mobile technologies have made this process much easier with an increasing number of food outlets providing customers the facility to place and even pre-pay meal orders.
“If advance ordering promotes better nutritional content of meals, this could become a new arrow in the quiver of societal attempts to lower calories in, and more generally improve the healthfulness of consumers’ diets,” the study commented.
Trio of studies
The researchers, based at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon University, first looked into over 1,000 orders that could be placed any time after 7am to be picked up between 11am and 2pm.
These studies involved randomly assigning subjects to either order from menus, where there were no calorie labels, numeric calorie labels, or traffic light calorie labels.
In some conditions, participants were shown their full lunch’s calorie content or a corresponding traffic light label as they made choices.
This was followed by an experiment that randomly assigned participants, who placed orders before 10am or after 11am.
Those in the advance ordering criteria had to collect orders at least an hour after placing them (delay ranged from 61 to 363 min), whereas those ordering at lunchtime received their orders sooner (delay ranged from 30 to 179 min).
The experiment itself was carried out in two stages. The first part provided no calorie information on the menu. This revealed no significant effect of delay.
The second part involved labelling eight of the 13 meals as having fewer than 500 calories. (The remaining items ranged from 560 to 960 calories.)
The final experiment randomly assigned subjects to order lunch before or after class, with meals provided straight after class.
Here, subjects made the decision to take part in the study before they were informed about any delays to their orders. The subjects could not self-select out of participation depending on this assigned condition (as participants in the previous study could).
This study also included measurement of hunger, meal satisfaction, and food waste, taken around the time of consumption.
‘Hot’ behaviours
"These findings provide one more piece of evidence that decisions made in the heat of the moment are not as far-sighted as those made in advance," said George Loewenstein, study lead author and Herbert A Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University.
"For example, people who, in dispassionate moments, recognise the stupidity of road rage nevertheless regularly succumb to it. Unfortunately, pre-commitment strategies are more feasible when it comes to diet than other 'hot' behaviours."
In trying to explain these observations, the team refereed to previous studies that showed people who cut calories in one meal might "make up" for the calorie reductions later, whether at dinner or via snacking.
The authors suggest future research measuring eating decisions over a longer period of time would be useful in addressing this issue. In addition, research examining analogous situations where participants pay full price for their meals would also prove beneficial.
Source: Journal of Marketing Research
Published online ahead of print, doi.org/10.1509/jmr.14.0234
“Advance Ordering for Healthier Eating? Field Experiments on the Relationship Between the Meal Order–Consumption Time Delay and Meal Content.”
Authors: George Loewenstein et al.