Lisa Bell sees the calorie labels staring down from the menu board at McDonald’s, but she doesn’t pay them any mind.

“I don’t have money and this is what I was craving for,” said Bell. “If I’m craving something, I’ll just go ahead and eat it.”

Mozella Montoute leaves a McDonald's in Morningside Heights. Photo: Sasha Chavkin.

Bell’s meal – a cheeseburger, small fries and two apple pie desserts – came out to 1,330 calories. The total amounted to roughly two-thirds of the recommended daily allowance of calories for a 125-pound woman, according to the Harvard Medical School’s Family Health Guide.

Bell is not the only one who is ignoring the labels that have been posted in New York City chain restaurants since March 31, 2008, when the city’s pioneering calorie labeling law went into effect. Two recent studies have drawn differing conclusions on the law’s impact: while the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that the customers were decreasing calorie consumption, researchers at New York University discovered no change in behavior among consumers in low-income neighborhoods. The debate over the labeling law and its effects in poor communities has stirred broader questions about the policies that are needed to promote better eating habits in these areas.

Dr. Brian Elbel, lead author of the NYU study, said that his findings do not conflict with those of the health department. Elbel conducted his study in low-income neighborhoods in New York City and Newark, while the health department surveyed communities of widely varying income levels.

“I don’t think that our studies are necessarily different,” said Elbel. “Differences in eating could be reflections of the core inequalities in these communities.”

In Morrisania, one of the nation’s poorest neighborhoods, the question of whether calorie labels can promote nutrition takes on an added urgency. According to the health department’s 2006 Community Health Profiles, 27 percent of adults in Morrisania and Highbridge are obese, 7 percentage points higher than New York City as a whole. This has contributed to a diabetes prevalence of 16 percent in these neighborhoods, nearly twice the rate of the rest of the city.

Some nine blocks north of the McDonald’s, the South Bronx Food Co-op is trying to provide nutritious alternatives for Morrisania. But with its substantially higher prices, co-op members admit that its customers are few and far between.

Unlike the McDonald’s, where every table was filled with customers, the co-op was empty except for two members stationed at the cash registers. A “Vegetarian Nature’s Burger” on the shelves cost $2.69 for the burger mix alone – enough to buy two hamburgers and an apple pie dessert at McDonald’s.

“You pay for quality,” said Robin Arroyo, 50, a co-op member.

The importance of price was also raised by Elbel, who stressed that he did not interpret the unchanged behavior found by his study as a repudiation of calorie labeling. Instead, he interprets his results as an indication that a broader approach is needed to promoting nutrition in low-income communities. “Our results do call into question what other policies may be needed aside from labeling,” he said.

Elbel stated that the price and availability of healthy food, the food marketing messages visible in public spaces and the quality of foods served in schools were all important factors in a more complete approach to promoting nutrition.

At the crowded McDonald’s restaurant, Jose Sanchez said that there weren’t too many alternatives to the Angus Third Pounder with bacon he was downing, alongside medium fries and a Coke, for a total of 1,200 to 1,440 calories.

“Price has a lot to with it,” said Sanchez. “I’m not cheap, but I don’t have $10.”