'Actvity labels' on food and drinks

Suggestion that food and drinks should be labelled to tell us how much exercise we need to do in order to burn off the calories in what we consume

At a time when obesity is an increasing health problem in our society, experts who work in public health are constantly exploring new ways of informing people about how to eat healthily and keep physically active. One of the things that we have all got used to by now is the ‘traffic light’ system of food labelling. This is the 3 colour label (a pie chart in red, yellow and green) on food packages that shows how much fat, sugar and carbohydrate the food contains. The more green that is on the label the healthier the product is whereas the more red tells us that the food is not a healthy choice.

Although this labelling system shows us the nutritional content of food, it may not mean very much to us in relation to the impact it has on us and how we can make sure to have a healthy food/activity balance. One suggestion that has been put forward by Shirley Cramer who is the chief executive of the Royal Society for Public Health, is that there could be another label on food products that tells us how long we would have to walk or run in order to burn off the calories in the food and drink that we buy/consume. So for instance, instead of just telling us how much fat, sugar and calories are in a chocolate bar, there would be a label showing that we would have to walk briskly for 42 minutes or run for 22 minutes in order to burn off the calories in the chocolate bar.

It is thought that this type of labelling might encourage people to be a bit more active in their everyday lives. Also, this type of information is not meant to scare people or telling people what they should NOT do. Instead, it is thought that it has a more positive angle, telling people what they CAN do. One of the main reason that a large proportion of the population in the UK – and other countries - is increasingly overweight or obese, is that we are consuming far more calories than we burn off. This can be because we don’t know how much we need to exercise in order to have that balance. The existing food labels about fat, sugar and calorie content tell us what we take into our bodies and perhaps the suggested activity/exercise label could help us to know more about what we need to do in order to burn off some of the calories that we have consumed. Of course, we mustn’t forget that we need calories to live and for cells in our bodies to grow and be healthy, particularly when our bodies are still growing and not yet completely developed. It’s all about the balance though…

What do you think about this type of ‘activity labelling’? You can leave a comment below.

Read more about this on NHS Choices website.

This article was first published : 5.5.2016