Socioeconomic Position and the Effectiveness of a Pricing Intervention Based on Energy Content in Restaurants: a Real-world Experiment

The goal of this clinical trial is to examine the impact of price decreases based on energy content in a full-service restaurant on immediate dietary consumption (in terms of kilocalories (kcals), sugar, fat, and salt intake) and dietary consumption the rest of the day following the intervention; and whether the intervention effects differ based on socioeconomic position (SEP).

Participants will be asked to visit the restaurant twice. At visit 1, participants will receive a control study menu with the existing pricing structure of the restaurant. At visit 2, participants will receive the same study menu with the pricing intervention introduced.

For comparative purposes a smaller subgroup of participants will receive the control menu at both visit 1 and 2 to allow the researchers to estimate whether any pre-post changes occur in the absence of a pricing intervention (and whether change differs by SEP).