If you want to know how long it will take to walk off a medium mocha or a quarter of a large pizza, a health expert campaigning to change food labelling has answers
‘A minute on the lips is a life time on the hips’ – or so the saying goes.
If you’ve ever wanted to know how much exercise it takes to burn off your favourite treats, a leading health expert has the answer.
It would take nearly an hour and a half to walk off a few slices of pizza and 26 minutes to walk away a can of fizzy drink, according to a woman campaigning for this kind of information to come on the label.
Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the Royal Society of Public Health believes such a move could help reduce obesity .
She has claimed that packaging should not only provide nutritional information but should “also help people to change behaviour.”
Writing in the British Medical Journal she wrote: “The aim is to prompt people to be more mindful of the energy they consume and how these calories relate to activities in their everyday lives, to encourage them to be more physically active.”
She points to research which found that 44% of people find the current front-of-pack information, known as traffic light labelling, confusing.
More than half (53%) also said that they would positively change their behaviour as a result of viewing activity equivalent calorie information.
She added: “Such information needs to be as simple as possible so that the public can easily decide what to buy and consume in the average six seconds people spend looking at food before buying.”
“People find symbols much easier to understand than numerical information, and activity equivalent calorie labels are easy to understand,” she continued.
“For example, the calories in a can of fizzy drink take a person of average age and weight about 26 minutes to walk off.”
Shirley says giving consumers an immediate link between foods’ energy content and physical activity might help to reduce obesity.
She said: “With more than two-thirds of the UK population either overweight or obese, we desperately need innovative initiatives to change behaviour at population level.
“We have a responsibility to promote measures to tackle the biggest public health challenges facing our society, such as obesity.”
However changing labels might be more difficult due to European legislation and resistance from manufacturers.
She said : “Fundamental change to packaging harbours little appetite among EU officials and food manufacturers.”
“However if it is shown to be an effective means to influence consumers’ decisions, we would implore law makers and industry to implement it to reduce obesity in the UK.”