The new calorie packaging scheme - UK

mitch239

Apologies if this doesn't belong here. But I need to find out peoples opinions.
So the UK is introducing a new scheme that means it will tell you how long you have to run or walk for to burn the amount of calories in the product. I'd like to know your opinion on things. Agree or Disagree? I don't want to get people into debates so no arguing. 😋😋

fitnessguy266

I would have to agree with the idea, no harm in setting healthy expectations

pacsnc6

But doesn't it vary by person's size and ability? We burn calories according to our muscle mass or whatever, so each person would be different, right?

DanyellMcGinnis

Those numbers are going to be completely different for a small, elderly woman and a young, obese man, and everyone in between.

pinuplove

pacsnc6 wrote: »

But doesn't it vary by person's size and ability? We burn calories according to our muscle mass or whatever, so each person would be different, right?

It will of course be very generalized (but so is the standard "2000 calorie diet" on American packaging). I'm assuming the idea is to add perspective - the CO portion of CICO - not be 100% accurate.

cwolfman13

It kind of ignores the fact that you burn a crap ton of calories merely existing. When I was dieting I had people make comments like that all the time...like, "you must do a ton of exercise to be able to eat X,Y,or Z and still lose weight"...Nah...I burn like 1800 calories just being alive and nothing else.

4legsRbetterthan2

Two thoughts:

In general I like availability of nutrition information (I loved when they started requiring restaurants to put it on menus in the US). I can see how this is similar and set realistic expectations in peoples head since it seems like a large portion of the population really has not idea how many calories are in food and how many calories they burn normally.

I could see it being a bit triggering for people with the overexercising version of anorexia. Or just naive people who think they need to exercise off every single thing they eat to lose weight and don't understand BMR (similar to cwolfmans comment above)

unstableunicorn

Disagree. It’s a well-meaning idea, but there are too many factors to consider when calculating calories burned, even whe accounting for “standard diet/activity”. Ultimately it would have the same impact as diet soda: uninformed consumers taking the labeling at face value and perpetuating poor dietary and activity habits as a result.

Luke_rabbit

I just saw an article about the new packaging with examples.

I don't have an ED, but I do have anxiety. These labels made me immediately feel panicky about eating the foods even though I am well aware of how CICO works.

To be fair, I had the same reaction the first time I was exposed to calories on a menu. I felt paralysed about making a choice because I had to now balance another data point along with what I like, what won't cause a problem (lactose, allergies, etc), what I can afford, etc.

Of course, now I do better with the calories on menus, so I'm sure I would adjust. However, I am glad it won't be coming to my labels anytime soon.

Edit:

And to the person who felt the need to disagree with a post that was obviously 100% about my own thoughts/ feelings/ experience ---

Go find some empathy! Geez! Or possibly work on your reading comprehension!

mtaratoot

Maybe if you think about it this way it won't cause so much anxiety. If you are a 150-pound person walking three miles per hour, it will take eight hours of walking to metabolize a recommended 2000 calorie diet. Now of COURSE you don't walk eight hours per day, but if you keep that eight hour number in mind when you look at labels, maybe you can just add up the minutes to get to eight hours instead of "counting calories." Just a wacky idea.

MikePTY

I think it creates an unhealthy association with food. Your don't need to "burn" most of what you eat from exercise. Your body burns it just from you existing. Exercise can provide some added burn, but it is still only a small part of it. I can see people unnecessarily restricting the amount they eat because the idea of exercising it off freaks them out. I get that is the point in a way to prevent people from overeating, but I think it will have unintended consequences for people at risk of EDs.

heybales

cwolfman13 wrote: »

It kind of ignores the fact that you burn a crap ton of calories merely existing. When I was dieting I had people make comments like that all the time...like, "you must do a ton of exercise to be able to eat X,Y,or Z and still lose weight"...Nah...I burn like 1800 calories just being alive and nothing else.

There ya go.

Combine that fact with the 2000 cal average diet always used.
Based on I believe Sedentary setting.

So 1600 BMR.

State how many hours sleeping to burn off the stated calories. ;-)

"This 200 cal serving of ice cream will take 3 hrs to burn off"

ythannah

DanyellMcGinnis wrote: »

Those numbers are going to be completely different for a small, elderly woman and a young, obese man, and everyone in between.

Exactly. They're going to be very different. I see it on my wall every day. MapMyWalk posts X calories burned by me for my 60 minute walk, and my friend's fitness tracker posts X + 30% calories for her 30 minute walk, because of our different size/age/pace.

The information is going to be so inaccurate that it's useless.

freda666

Can I point out this is just a suggestion from a university research group and there are no plans whatsoever to implement.

sijomial

"So the UK is introducing a new scheme that means it will tell you how long you have to run or walk for to burn the amount of calories in the product."
Not true. You didn't listen to the news article very well if you came to that conclusion, it's just a suggestion from Loughborough University.

"I'd like to know your opinion on things. Agree or Disagree? I don't want to get people into debates so no arguing. "
My opinion would be don't post in the debate section unless you want a debate!

My other opinion is that most people wouldn't be that interested in a very random estimate but it might be thought provoking for some but probably unlikely to actually influence their food choices. If people are interested in calorie tracking the information is already there.

Lobsterboxtops

I can see both sides to this. Weirdly it came up as a topic on askamanager.com a couple of weeks ago.

On the one hand I think it can help the problem of overestimating exercise calories burned. I was once in an informational talk by a dietician student at university who stated that it would require walking a football field to work off the calories of 1 m&m. Now I never fact checked that, but it has been something that put in perspective the relationship between calories and exercise.

On the other hand, until a person is ready to absorb the information it won’t do any good.

glassyo

Lobsterboxtops wrote: »

I can see both sides to this. Weirdly it came up as a topic on askamanager.com a couple of weeks ago.

On the one hand I think it can help the problem of overestimating exercise calories burned. I was once in an informational talk by a dietician student at university who stated that it would require walking a football field to work off the calories of 1 m&m. Now I never fact checked that, but it has been something that put in perspective the relationship between calories and exercise.

On the other hand, until a person is ready to absorb the information it won’t do any good.

That dietician student needed to do more studying and less talking.

lemurcat2

swierzbik1 wrote: »

glassyo wrote: »

Lobsterboxtops wrote: »

I can see both sides to this. Weirdly it came up as a topic on askamanager.com a couple of weeks ago.

On the one hand I think it can help the problem of overestimating exercise calories burned. I was once in an informational talk by a dietician student at university who stated that it would require walking a football field to work off the calories of 1 m&m. Now I never fact checked that, but it has been something that put in perspective the relationship between calories and exercise.

On the other hand, until a person is ready to absorb the information it won’t do any good.

That dietician student needed to do more studying and less talking.

If he was talking purely about energy generated through movement he was right, better check before bashing on people. However when it comes to humans we constantly burn way more because of BMR and NEAT so yes the OVERALL calories burned by walking around football field are way way way higher however from purely physics perspective and kilocalories created from the power output then yes it would be equivalent to an m&m. When in doubt, always use 70%BMR 20%NEAT 10%EXERCISE of TDEE (this are not entirely accurate but work more all less for majority of population)

Closer to 2 M&Ms, even not counting what you will burn anyway. That's for someone of about 150 lb.

glassyo

Oooookay, I took it as "football field....really big. One m&m....really small".

Now, I think I'll eat some m&ms....while still exercising.

Also, that wasn't even close to bashing.