Public Health researchers are hoping food manufacturers will introduce packaging labels telling people how much exercise it’ll take to burn off the calories in their foods.
With more than two-thirds of the British population either overweight or obese, the aim is their latest attempt to raise public awareness and encourage healthier eating habits to fight obesity and establish the link between food calorie intake and exercise imbalance.
They estimate a 500-calorie chocolate muffin will take a 50-minute run to burn off, with every minute of running burning around 10 calories.
Having seen the festive food in my fridge, I reckon I’ll be running until April to burn off every calorie.
But does food labelling really work?
We’ve had a traffic light warning labelling system on our food for some time and I’ve never seen anyone in a supermarket aisle studying it and putting food back on the shelf.
If anything, I find the people in supermarkets aren’t very worried about being active at all, they just like to annoyingly stand in the way of everything you want to buy. Ironically, just trying to walk around them can burn off 10 calories and wrestling them until they move an extra 25.
People rarely check food labels; they just buy what they like.
If researchers really want to introduce shock tactics, maybe it would be more effective to have a shop assistant with a megaphone going around Iceland and shouting at obese people as they open up their umpteenth freezer that the last thing they really need in their lives is another chocolate fudge cake whilst chucking a wet lettuce at them.
Maybe they could introduce an automatic door at McDonald’s with a weighing scale footplate operation, that won’t allow anyone in if they are overweight.
But the main flaw with this food/exercise idea is that nobody, having eaten a 12” meat feast pizza, is going to run for 3 hours afterwards because they can barely move and would get chronic indigestion if they did.
Russ Writes 
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