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The impact of altering restaurant and menu option position on food selected from an experimental food delivery platform: a randomised controlled trial
Overconsumption poses a significant public health issue in the UK, particularly linked to the rise of food delivery services. To address this, the present study investigated whether altering the presentation of food and restaurant options on a simulated delivery platform could mitigate users’ energy-content choices.
In this research, 9,003 adult users of a UK food delivery platform participated in a simulated shopping experience. Participants were randomly assigned to either a control group, where food choices were randomized, or to one of four intervention groups focusing on different repositioning strategies. These strategies included (1) listing food options in order of increasing energy content, (2) listing restaurants by the average energy content of their main meals, (3) a combination of the first two methods, and (4) combining the first two methods while also prioritizing options based on a kcal/price index.
Gamma regressions were employed to evaluate how these interventions affected the total energy content of the participants’ baskets at checkout. The control group’s average basket energy content was measured at 1382 kcals. All interventions demonstrated a statistically significant reduction in energy content: the strategy that repositioned both foods and restaurants based solely on energy content led to the most substantial decrease in energy intake, reducing it by an average of 209 kcals. The individual approach of repositioning restaurants resulted in an average reduction of 161 kcals, while the kcal/price index repositioning reduced energy intake by 117 kcals, and listing foods by energy alone reduced it by 88 kcals.
Interestingly, all interventions lowered the overall cost of the baskets compared to the control, except for the kcal/price index approach, which resulted in a higher basket price. These findings indicate that presenting lower-energy food options more prominently in online platforms may effectively encourage healthier meal choices, offering a potential strategy that could be integrated into sustainable business practices. [NPID:
Year: 2026
