A new research has asserted that listing calories and nutritional information on menus of fast-food restaurants could help parents make better choices for their kids and opt for food items which have lower calories.

Thanks to many legislations and regulations, many American restaurant chains are now clearly posting food items' nutritional information on their menus. Whether or not sharing this information would translate into healthy eating was, however, unclear.

But the new study, which was conducted with menus from McDonald's, has strongly suggested that the sharing of this info does help.

"When parents are provided with calorie information they chose about 100 calories less [per meal] for their 3- to 6-year-old child compared to parents who didn't have that information. One hundred calories over time is actually a significant amount in terms of weight gain, given the rates of fast food consumption and childhood obesity in our country", said lead researcher Dr. Pooja Tandon.

Details of the study, which included survey of 99 parents of 3 to 6 year olds, have been published in the January 25 online issue of Paediatrics.