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The new calorie packaging scheme - UK

2

Replies

  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,950 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    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.

    OK, but the original statement was "walking a football field" (which to me means walking the length of a football field), but it has morphed into "walking around football field," so if the latter is 2 M&Ms worth of calories, the former would be about a third of that (accounting for crossing the width of the field twice, as well as crossing the length twice).
  • RovP6
    RovP6 Posts: 108 Member
    It's a bad idea and will only lead to people forming a poor relationship with food. Food is something to be enjoyed. It's part of our social behaviour. It should not be simply viewed as a source of fuel for exercise nor should exercise be viewed as a way to compensate for overeating. We all know you can't out-exercise a poor diet. This would seem to suggest that you can.
  • SuziQ113
    SuziQ113 Posts: 1,520 Member
    Certainly the 2,000 calorie guideline in the US has not worked - we are more obese than ever. But, attitudes and practices vary around the world so it may be a good thing.

    But we are all human. And, I think for those who track and care it will be another piece of information at their finger tips. Those who are not concerned are going to eat what they eat and move on with their day. No pun intended.

    Hope everyone has a great day!
  • Lobsterboxtops
    Lobsterboxtops Posts: 92 Member
    edited December 2019
    Haha...and this thread is why I see both sides of this. I feel like there are three kinds of people in this world...

    1. Those who hear something, take it with a grain of salt and apply it generally to their daily lives
    2. Those who hear something, calculate it to the nth degree
    3. Those who hear something, don’t want to agree with it and dismiss it outright.

    The information being suggested would help the first group, might work for the second group, and will be ignored by the third group.


    Back to the now infamous m&m, I simplified the the message. All things being equal and assuming one is already breathing and living and consuming calories by existing if one were to eat an m&m and wanted to deliberately convert the calories of that m&m into energy it would require the equivalent of walking the length of one football field. I’m other words calories in and calories out. It was never intended to be a direct calculation.
  • BoxerBrawler
    BoxerBrawler Posts: 2,032 Member
    I think it's a great idea. I know plenty of people who don't shed a tear or even pay attention to the number of calories listed on the menu. I also know a ton of people who actually don't understand CICO and they don't know that you can't out-exercise a bad diet. There are people who still think carbs are bad... so yeah, people just don't know this stuff. I think the only thing that would happen is that it would create further awareness and maybe even help some people start to think about how much they're putting into their body on a daily basis. For those who might get triggered? Oh well.. if it's not a calorie count or number of calories burned as the trigger I am sure it will be something else.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    edited December 2019
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    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.

    OK, but the original statement was "walking a football field" (which to me means walking the length of a football field), but it has morphed into "walking around football field," so if the latter is 2 M&Ms worth of calories, the former would be about a third of that (accounting for crossing the width of the field twice, as well as crossing the length twice).

    I was basing what I said on walking across a football field, i.e. 300 ft.

    Specifically, an M&M has about 3 calories.

    Walking a km at a slow pace when you weigh 150 lb (68 kg) (not taking into account other cals you are burning in the same time just by being alive) burns 62 calories, according to that Runtastic calculator. 1 km is about 3281 ft. So a football field is about 10.9 football fields. Based on that, walking across the football field burns about 5.7 calories, or about 2 M&Ms.

    To put that in terms more meaningful to me, one city block in my city = 660 feet. That means I can burn nearly 4 M&Ms just by walking a city block, which is a quite short distance (well, maybe closer to 3 or 3.5, since I'm less than 150 lb and I was rounding up). A single M&M just isn't many cals.
  • The_Enginerd
    The_Enginerd Posts: 3,982 Member
    The formula I've seen for net calories burned based on energy expenditure studies was 0.30 calories/mile/pound for walking, and 0.63 calories/mile/pound for running.

    For 100 yards (0.0568182 miles), a 150 lb person would burn 2.5 calories walking that far. A single M&M appears to be 3.4 calories per the MFP database.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    edited December 2019
    Here's the calculator I used: https://www.runtastic.com/blog/en/calories-burned-walking-vs-running/

    It seems to be a bit higher than that formula for walking and running, and also has less of a difference between walking (even at a quite slow pace, 3.2 km/hour) and running.

    It says that walking and running burn the same cals if the walking is fast enough and the running slow enough (about 5 miles per hour). Of course, most likely cannot walk 5 mph, I certainly cannot.
  • MichelleWithMoxie
    MichelleWithMoxie Posts: 1,819 Member
    I think it's a great idea. I know plenty of people who don't shed a tear or even pay attention to the number of calories listed on the menu. I also know a ton of people who actually don't understand CICO and they don't know that you can't out-exercise a bad diet. There are people who still think carbs are bad... so yeah, people just don't know this stuff. I think the only thing that would happen is that it would create further awareness and maybe even help some people start to think about how much they're putting into their body on a daily basis. For those who might get triggered? Oh well.. if it's not a calorie count or number of calories burned as the trigger I am sure it will be something else.

    How empathetic of you 🙄🙄🙄
  • Lobsterboxtops
    Lobsterboxtops Posts: 92 Member
    Maybe it was a peanut m&m? Sorry couldn’t resist, you guys are killing me 🤣
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Maybe it was a peanut m&m? Sorry couldn’t resist, you guys are killing me 🤣

    Though - with a peanut M&M less of the calories is actually absorbed from the peanut, so maybe 2!
    ;-)
  • mbaker566
    mbaker566 Posts: 11,233 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    Here's the calculator I used: https://www.runtastic.com/blog/en/calories-burned-walking-vs-running/

    It seems to be a bit higher than that formula for walking and running, and also has less of a difference between walking (even at a quite slow pace, 3.2 km/hour) and running.

    It says that walking and running burn the same cals if the walking is fast enough and the running slow enough (about 5 miles per hour). Of course, most likely cannot walk 5 mph, I certainly cannot.

    i did find that runtastic highly overestimated my calorie burn
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    edited December 2019
    mbaker566 wrote: »
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    Here's the calculator I used: https://www.runtastic.com/blog/en/calories-burned-walking-vs-running/

    It seems to be a bit higher than that formula for walking and running, and also has less of a difference between walking (even at a quite slow pace, 3.2 km/hour) and running.

    It says that walking and running burn the same cals if the walking is fast enough and the running slow enough (about 5 miles per hour). Of course, most likely cannot walk 5 mph, I certainly cannot.

    i did find that runtastic highly overestimated my calorie burn

    I actually found it consistent with runkeeper, and both were basically on the mark for me.

    Not sure if the article I linked is related to how the app tracks, however.
  • vivo1972
    vivo1972 Posts: 129 Member
    I'm on the other side of the coin, I think it's a good idea.

    It gives a rough idea if you are trying to improve fitness and health (like the 100 calorie walk a mile thing).

    Also like the lumps of sugar per X app - mainly sweeties and stuff.

    It gives a simple visualisation for people that don't really know and need to improve activity.

  • Fuzzipeg
    Fuzzipeg Posts: 2,297 Member
    Probably nutritional recomendations would be better information to be providing. Suggestions of how much/many fruits or vegetables one needs to achieve the recommended daily allowance of vit c, or suggestions for the amount of protein etc could be more helpful. Probably introducing people to the concept of our needing various minerals, most of us cover calcium needs daily but how many think selenium, zinc or even iodine, then there are so many other daily nutritional reqirements too. Its a real shame someone in the past decided there was no point in providing, Home Economics, Domestic Science classes and the like to our children was a good idea they enabled me to make a reasonable start at feeding myself. I know much of the teaching in the 1960's did not go into the finer details, scientific understading was not as detailed as it is today, I will say this, we were really in a much better position when it came to feeding ourselves than most of our young people are these days.

    Providing calorific information may be fine for the majority with a healthy endocrine system but for those who have clinically identifiable damaged and medically determined problems which require an improved understanding of nutrition the proposed system could support their continued ignorance finally causing more distress. There are many other medical reasons why many become over weight, things from allergies and the growing multitude of intolerances people are enountering these because their bodies do not produce all the expected enzymes nor house all the usual/expected list of dietary microbes to keep the multiple expressions of inflamaiton at bay. Shouting its all a matter of calories consumed versus calories expended, just does not cut it for those people, they deserve greater scientific explantion and societal understanding rather than vilification.
  • MPDean
    MPDean Posts: 99 Member
    People with specific medical needs require special education to control those needs. The other 95%+ of the population need general education and information to prevent further spreading of the obesity and type 2 diabetes crises.
  • McBurnsalot
    McBurnsalot Posts: 14 Member
    It’s a idiotic waste of time and business resources. The nutrition label is all anyone needs to know.

    I agree with the poster above that it creates a unhealthy image of food and exercise.

    One side of someone that is bulimic is too gorge on food and then exercise an inordinate amount to burn off the calories.
  • gothchiq
    gothchiq Posts: 4,598 Member
    People are too different. I think their estimate would be misleading for many.
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    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.

    OK, but the original statement was "walking a football field" (which to me means walking the length of a football field), but it has morphed into "walking around football field," so if the latter is 2 M&Ms worth of calories, the former would be about a third of that (accounting for crossing the width of the field twice, as well as crossing the length twice).

    I was basing what I said on walking across a football field, i.e. 300 ft.

    Specifically, an M&M has about 3 calories.

    Walking a km at a slow pace when you weigh 150 lb (68 kg) (not taking into account other cals you are burning in the same time just by being alive) burns 62 calories, according to that Runtastic calculator. 1 km is about 3281 ft. So a football field is about 10.9 football fields. Based on that, walking across the football field burns about 5.7 calories, or about 2 M&Ms.

    To put that in terms more meaningful to me, one city block in my city = 660 feet. That means I can burn nearly 4 M&Ms just by walking a city block, which is a quite short distance (well, maybe closer to 3 or 3.5, since I'm less than 150 lb and I was rounding up). A single M&M just isn't many cals.

    How many city blocks should I walk for precisely one cheekful of M&Ms though?
    That's a serving size, right? One cheekful?
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    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.

    OK, but the original statement was "walking a football field" (which to me means walking the length of a football field), but it has morphed into "walking around football field," so if the latter is 2 M&Ms worth of calories, the former would be about a third of that (accounting for crossing the width of the field twice, as well as crossing the length twice).

    I was basing what I said on walking across a football field, i.e. 300 ft.

    Specifically, an M&M has about 3 calories.

    Walking a km at a slow pace when you weigh 150 lb (68 kg) (not taking into account other cals you are burning in the same time just by being alive) burns 62 calories, according to that Runtastic calculator. 1 km is about 3281 ft. So a football field is about 10.9 football fields. Based on that, walking across the football field burns about 5.7 calories, or about 2 M&Ms.

    To put that in terms more meaningful to me, one city block in my city = 660 feet. That means I can burn nearly 4 M&Ms just by walking a city block, which is a quite short distance (well, maybe closer to 3 or 3.5, since I'm less than 150 lb and I was rounding up). A single M&M just isn't many cals.

    How many city blocks should I walk for precisely one cheekful of M&Ms though?
    That's a serving size, right? One cheekful?

    Of course. I believe that MFP's database has a cheekful as either 236 cals or 5 cals (this one also has 26 g of protein) or 2463 cals, so you should choose based on your personal cheek (I have the high protein one, I am sure). With that, you can do the math.