Calorie labeling, an increasingly common policy intervention, has had mixed effects onconsumer food choices. We show that visual salience of the calorie labels, rather than merelyinformation content or format, is the key to reducing calorie. Our findings indicate that effectivelabeling, more visually salient than standard industry disclosures, works primarily as a reminder,by prompting people to consider nutrition rather than by providing new information. Bothvisually salient information and completely non-informative “mere reminders” to considercalories have similar effects on calorie choices, by making people more likely to incorporatetheir beliefs about nutrition into their decision. As a consequence, when consumers perceivehigh-calorie items as healthy, calorie labeling working as mere reminders will be less effectiveand can even backfire, leading to more choices of healthy-seeming high-calorie food options.The findings underscore the need for experimentally testing the psychological consequences ofeven ostensibly informational interventions.