A trial at English secondary schools of alternative food labelling – which displayed the number of minutes of physical activity needed to burn off calories – reduced the purchase of sugary foods by a small amount, new research has found.
The study was led by Dr Natalia Iris and Professor Amanda Daley, who are part of Loughborough University’s Centre for Lifestyle Medicine and Behaviour (CLiMB).
It analysed almost 100,000 purchases of cakes and biscuits from 11 school canteens over a six-week period. Six schools used physical activity calorie equivalent (PACE) food labelling on their sweet treats, and five schools continued with their usual practice.
PACE food labelling aims to show how many minutes or miles of physical activity are needed to burn off the calories in a particular food or drink. For example, eating 230 calories in a small bar of chocolate would require about 46 minutes of walking or 23 minutes of running to burn off these calories.