Exercise Focused Food Packaging...!

Exercise on food packaging?? What are your thoughts? 

The BBC reported that researchers have suggested putting the amount of exercise you need to do to 'burn off' certain foods on the labels! 

This may put things into some context for some people, it is my opinion that this is just as likely backfire and create more issues around eating! 

Calculating how much exercise you need to do to 'burn off' a mince pie, for example, is a very difficult thing to calculate. It is not as simple as calories in calories out. There is your individual BMR, that is the basal metabolic rate, i.e how many calories you burn at rest, this varies on age, gender and size. Then there is the type of job you have, if you are sitting at a desk all day, you burn fewer calories than someone who has an active job. Blah blah blah. 

But more pressing is the increasing levels of people living with food-related anxiety in our communities, in West Sussex, we have the highest cases of eating disorders in the country!  So perhaps this is not a great idea? 

I believe that it is far healthier to inspire someone to change, rather than creating change through fear. Research actually shows that those who change entirely through fear make no difference to their long term health anyway! So let us save some more mental health issues and not add exercise requirements to our food labelling! ​