What if you knew a cookie would take 20 minutes to run off?

[morefoolyou]

What if you knew a cookie would take 20 minutes to run off?

By CANDICE CHOI December 20, 2019 GMT


NEW YORK (AP) — Would you put down that bag of chips if you saw it had 170 calories? What if the label said it would take 16 minutes of running to burn off those calories?

Health experts for years have pushed for clearer food labeling to empower people to make better choices. In the U.S., a recent regulation requires calorie counts on packages to be bigger. Red, yellow and green labels signal the healthfulness of some foods in the United Kingdom. But with obesity rates persistently high, researchers are looking at whether more drastic approaches could help.

One attention-grabbing idea being explored: Labeling foods with “exercise calories,” or the amount of physical activity needed to burn them off. For example, a chocolate bar might say it has 230 calories, alongside icons indicating that amounts to 42 minutes of walking or 22 minutes of running.

With calorie counts, experts worry the information doesn’t mean much if people don’t know how much they should be eating anyway. And with the “traffic light” system, people might not understand why a food is red — is it the fat, the sugar or something else?

It’s no surprise some people don’t pay attention to current labels, but exercise calories might be more useful, said Amanda Daley, a professor of behavioral medicine at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom,

“They may still ignore it, but let’s give it a go. Let’s at least give them a chance to be able to easily understand,” she said.

Not everyone finds the idea compelling. Regardless of whether it gets people to eat less, it could reinforce negative attitudes about exercise, said Yoni Freedhoff, an obesity expert at the University of Ottawa.

“The idea that exercise is a punishment for eating does not strike me as a good way to promote exercise or healthy attitudes around food,” he said.

Instead of trying to find a label that can finally persuade people to stop eating unhealthy foods, Freedhoff said it would be better to promote environments where it’s easier to make good choices.

For now, it’s unknown how exercise-time labeling would affect choices in the real world. Last week, a BMJ journal published an analysis co-authored by Daley reviewing the limited research so far. The review suggested it may lead people to pick lower-calorie items than no labeling at all. But the evidence was less clear when comparing exercise calorie labeling to specific alternatives like calorie counts alone.

The concept may seem too drastic to ever become reality. But Brian Elbel, a New York University public health expert who studies calorie counts on menus, said other measures — such as soda taxes — also once seemed far-fetched.

“Just because it’s not going to happen tomorrow doesn’t mean it’s not an important thing to look at,” Elbel said.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

[nadra24]

Thanks I hate it. Exercise isn't a punishment, and eating (even junk food) is not a punishable offense. And that's exactly what labelling foods this way would communicate.

[BonitaApplebum]

Thanks I hate it. Exercise isn't a punishment, and eating (even junk food) is not a punishable offense. And that's exactly what labelling foods this way would communicate.

Preach!

And I’m sorry, but no foods are “bad” - leave the value judging out of it, please.

[diablita]

amen!  I don't even want to read the majority of the article

[CheryG]

I dunno. I think it's a good reminder in a way. I don't think of exercise as punishment, but I do need to watch what I eat. So equating food as fuel is helpful to me. Miles per gallon so to speak.

It's also a reminder, as I look at my year end running stats, of how fortunate I am to be able to have enough food to exercise for fun.  It was a laid back year for me, and I still burned an additional 70,000+/- calories with exercise.

I would think that *if well crafted* a food as fuel campaign would be helpful to remove some of the emotion surrounding food.

[CheryG]

IMO the real problem is that humans don't have a universal mpg. But neither do cars and we're totally used to that type of thinking. I'd be inclined to use a little gas pump icon rather rhan a runner icon.

[Magic Microbe]

I dont think this is the way to enjoy a healthy relationship with food.

[Natasha]

I totally thought this thread would be about a cookie that wasn't that popular, and so nobody took it for 20 minutes.

[PWWP]

A single pack containing two Suzie Q's Cakes contains 500 calories. So I'll usually buy a pack and eat one and have the other on a different day. That's healthy eating!

[Ice Cream]

I do not interpret it this way at all. To me it says that both food and exercise are required for a healthy life style.

Would you feel the same way if the article had been phrased as follows?

"One attention-grabbing idea being explored: Labeling foods with “exercise calories,” or the amount of physical activity needed to burn them off. For example, a bowl of pea soup might say it has 230 calories, alongside icons indicating that amounts to 42 minutes of walking or 22 minutes of running."

[rocketgirl]

Conceptually, this bothers me.  I just do not think that way, nor do I want to.  A chocolate bar is not evil and exercise is not punishment.  If however you are eating and however you are moving are not working for you, change it, but this is not a battle between good and evil.  And a person is not good or bad for not having found a societally-approved balance.

That said, when I used so cycle regularly with a group who regularly stated "Eat to ride; ride to eat", they passed around one of those calculators where you can select what all you eat for Thanksgiving dinner.  Of course the point was to calculate how many miles you'd need to ride to burn off the over-indulgence of the holiday meal.  Whereas, I was "OMG!  It takes an ENTIRE Thanksgiving dinner to fuel a metric century!"  I will admit I was having a hard time getting a handle on how much more I needed to eat to ride ever-increasing distances while also training for a sprint triathlon.  So, it was kind of shocking.

[Magic Microbe]

Exercise is not a punishment for what I have eaten. That is the definition of an unhealthy relationship with food.