Junk food 'should be labelled with how long you need to exercise to burn it off'

Junk food 'should be labelled with how long you need to exercise to burn it off'
Junk food snacks should be labelled with how long you need to exercise to burn it off, a review has found...

The physical activity calorie equivalent (PACE) food labelling shows eating 229 calories in a small bar of milk chocolate would require about 42 minutes of walking or 22 minutes of running to burn off.

Experts say such shock labelling is needed to stop us filling our faces at mealtimes.
A team led by Loughborough University reviewed 15 studies to compare the impact of PACE labelling and the current labelling. They found listing how much exercise was needed to burn off food and drink cut 65 calories per meal on average.

This is the paper, not to be confused with any other PACE trial!
https://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2019/11/24/jech-2019-213216


Not sure how that works for me I don't do any exercise, does that mean I shouldn't be eating.

 

It might have an effect if it's done by the size the item is normally consumed in and not e.g. only 99 calories (16 servings - in a 300g cake).

Everything has nutritional info on, at least in the UK, apart from some 'small' companies (a lot of whom seem to be national or even multinational - but they still don't have to comply). The problem with this is in the small print they give stupid portion sizes that a child after the annual Christmas stuffing would consider unrealistically small - so no one pays any attention.

A burger is not a meal for 2 people, a bag of crisps is a single portion, 500ml of ice cream may technically be able to supply the caloric requirements of a small nation for a week but in practice describing it as more than 4 portions is dishonest, as many people will eat it in one or 2 hits.

Many companies seem to take the calories in a product and divide it by 400 (so as to hit the dieting market as well) and then say the product has that number of portions in it.

etc.

 

Yes, out of curiosity a while ago I weighed out a normal sized bowl of breakfast cereal, it was well over double the supposed serving size.

 

I wish that labels would put both cup size and gram size. Saying that 29 gr of cereal has 110 calories doesn't mean that much, but if it reads 3/4 cup is 110 calories it's much easier to visualize the portion size.

 

I have mixed feelings about the labelling also. The fact is that you have to do a lot of exercise to drop excess weight and this can be a bit demoralising if you do not have the time or ability. This labelling may have the unexpected effect of discouraging people from exercise in the first place!

 

Eighty percent of weight loss is down to how much food people put in their mouths during the day. You can exercise all you want, but if you don't cut back on the amount of food you eat, you will not lose weight.

 

3/4 cup from the top of the box, or from the bottom after the Oat-y-Flaykz have gotten crushed? How do I measure 1 cup of Crimini mushrooms? It fits 3, no 5, well maybe 9, hey you could get 12 in. Volume works for liquids and grains, not so well for random food. Here is the US, serving size is frequently given in both volume and weight, but personally I find weight to be far more useful.

Let’s say I want to snack on 100 calories of, oh, puffy cheese bakes. 100 kc, no more. Let’s say that 1 cup of those is supposedly 400 kc, so that means I can have 1/4 cup. (It also tells me that the 400 cal serving is xx grams, let’s say 60 for this case). Try measuring out 1/4 cup of baked cheese pieces when none of them fit in the cup. Once you crush/crumble them, you’ve changed (decreased) their volume, making the measurement meaningless.

Grams? Plonk bowl on $18 digital scale, pile on stuff until it reads 15g, done. Do it 3 times and I’ve memorized what 100 c of that looks like. Works for all foods, liquid, solid, airy, dense. No fool-myself eyeballing, no ‘well that looks like what would fit in a cup, if any if this food at all’. How many cups are one slice of cake? Well, if I want that cake, I’m going to see it as one cup or whatever the allowed portion is if I imagine it rounded off, folded and reshaped just so.

The scale plays no such games.

 

This would be really really bad for people who suffer from eating disorders.

 

So true. There are so many complex reasons for obesity and demonising junk foods is not the answer. I don't believe that there is a set amount of time you need to run off junk food. I have always had friends far more active than me who are larger. We all have different metabolisms and it is not one size fits all re wait gain or loss. Plenty of medication also has the effect of causing weight gain, as does alcohol consumption.

The labelling idea is big business and big pharma shifting the blame from them to the consumer.

 

Yep and as I observed it can change during the course of a disease.

 

I agree. And also perhaps OCD, I have suffered with both. I would find it very difficult with this sort of labeling.

 

I'm uncomfortable about the label 'junk food' – it's food, and if it's all you can afford or you don't have access to cooking facilities, it's what you eat.

Food, body weight, and self-image is such a tangle of complex issues that I think it's helpful to try and get away from implicit value judgements. Any of us can be taken by surprise over the amount of sugar, fat, or whatever in an individual product, but basically most people know what they should be eating to stay healthy and avoid gaining weight.

I don't think we'll see much real progress until structural change is made somehow. Healthy food is expensive, unhealthy food is cheap, and far too many families just can't earn enough to make ends meet – specially as housing costs are out of control as well. It's not surprising folk are struggling with it all!

 

I’ve used calorie counting apps for so long I can figure out the number of calories for any food or meal. It wouldn’t work for me. Unfortunately I can’t exercise very much and eating is one of the few pleasures of life I can still enjoy. So I will keep indulging once in a while.

 

All calories are not equal.
The body uses different macronutrients in different ways. Depending on your metabolism and genes it may be easier/ harder to burn off fat etc

 

Some people can not digest the nutrients properly, everyone is different. I know people eat like horses but still very skinny. Best would be not allow junk to be produced and sold. It's the opposite all sorts of junk food is out there and advertised into our faces all the time. There's now huge limitations on cigarette advertisement and sale, why not apply the same to junk food? I think we all know the answer.

 

Years ago I watched a program about the science behind making the addictive potato chip. Scientists calculate the perfect ratio of salt, fat and carbs that activates the brain reward centre and keeps people addicted. A potato chip is not just an innocent potato chip.