No, it's much easier to pass on dessert when you know it's 1600 calories as opposed to if you think it's much less. In essence the disclosure of how bad that particular item really is reduces the amount of willpower required to avoid it. If this wasn't true, all these restaurants wouldn't have kept the calorie counts of these dishes secret until the government forced them to share that info.
I mean this is common sense, the more clearly you understand the negatives of an action, the more likely you are to avoid it. And we have plenty of evidence that this works to alter people's behavior through looking at the effects of e.g. cigarette labeling.
Like up until the 1950s we actually didn't have good evidence that cigarettes were bad for you, and doctors actually got on TV and endorsed specific brands, so a lot of people weren't sure. Eventually the studies were produced and doctors started recommending against smoking and smoking started to decline. It didn't decline because people became Badass Willpower Monks, it declined because they were given access to more and better information.
"Less self control needed" which is your argument in this follow-up comment is very different from "Nothing to do with self control" in your original comment.
I mean this is common sense, the more clearly you understand the negatives of an action, the more likely you are to avoid it. And we have plenty of evidence that this works to alter people's behavior through looking at the effects of e.g. cigarette labeling.
Like up until the 1950s we actually didn't have good evidence that cigarettes were bad for you, and doctors actually got on TV and endorsed specific brands, so a lot of people weren't sure. Eventually the studies were produced and doctors started recommending against smoking and smoking started to decline. It didn't decline because people became Badass Willpower Monks, it declined because they were given access to more and better information.