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The new calorie packaging scheme - UK

mitch239
mitch239 Posts: 77 Member
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. 😋😋
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Replies

  • fitnessguy266
    fitnessguy266 Posts: 150 Member
    I would have to agree with the idea, no harm in setting healthy expectations
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 12,930 Member
    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.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    edited December 2019
    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
    ythannah Posts: 4,366 Member
    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.
  • Lobsterboxtops
    Lobsterboxtops Posts: 92 Member
    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
    glassyo Posts: 7,570 Member
    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
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    swierzbik1 wrote: »
    glassyo 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
    glassyo Posts: 7,570 Member
    edited December 2019
    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.