Report: Healthy change comes slowly to restaurant chains

Despite announcements made by the top chain restaurants over the years that they are offering healthier food, the overall calorie and salt levels in restaurant food remain about the same, according to a study by the Institute for Population Health Improvement at UC Davis Health System.

The study by Helen Wu, a policy and research analyst at the Institute, was published Tuesday in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Between the spring of 2010 and spring of 2011, Wu and Roland Sturm, senior economist at the RAND Corp., reviewed nutrition information on restaurant websites.

In 2010, the average meal had 670 calories, and it was still 670 calories a year later.

Sodium levels dropped just slightly from 1,515 milligrams in 2010 to 1,500 milligrams a year later.

“Restaurant menus did not get any healthier over time,” Wu said in a news release.

“Across the restaurant industry, we see a pattern of one step forward, one step back,” Wu said. “Restaurants make changes to their menus regularly, but they may make both healthy and unhealthy changes simultaneously. This study provides objective evidence that overall, we did not see a new wave of healthier entrées come in to replace less healthy ones.”