Given a choice between a sugary beverage and water, would you still drink the sugary beverage if you knew how many miles you would have to walk in order to burn off the calories?
A study led by researchers at the Bloomberg School of Public Health demonstrates that adolescents who saw printed signs displaying the number of miles they would need to walk in order to burn off the calories from a sugary beverage were more likely to purchase lower-calorie beverages, smaller-sized beverages, or healthier beverages. Additionally, the adolescents’ healthier choices persisted weeks after the signs were removed.
The study was published online in the American Journal of Public Health on October 16.
“The main motivation of this research was to identify ways to maximize the implementation of the menu-labeling regulation in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which requires chain restaurants with more than 20 outlets to post calorie information alongside price,” Sara Bleich, a study leader and an associate professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
Increasing evidence implies that Americans are not letting go of bad eating habits after simply seeing calorie counts on products and menus.
“Americans generally have poor knowledge of nutrition and are not good at mental math,” Bleich wrote. “So, it is not reasonable to expect someone to know how the calories of a single item fit within their total recommended daily calories – and to figure this out quickly at the point of purchase.”
The researchers suggest that policymakers may need to reconsider the ways in which caloric information for foods and beverages should be communicated to consumers. They expect the final ruling from the FDA about how companies should post calorie information to be released at the end of the calendar year.
The experiments for the study were performed in six-week stretches between Aug. 2012 and Jun. 2013. They created signs that indicated the number of calories in a 20 oz. bottle of soda, sports drink or fruit juice. The signs presented the calorie amount by indicating either that each bottle included 250 calories, had 16 teaspoons of sugar, would take 50 minutes of running to work off those calories, or would take five miles to walk the calories off.
The scientists hung the signs on the beverage cases in six corner stores in low-income, predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Baltimore. Their goal was to observe the behavior of African-American adolescents, a group at a higher risk of obesity.
In the six stores, Bleich and her colleagues observed a total of 3,098 drink purchases by black adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18. They interviewed 25 percent of these adolescents and asked them if they saw and understood the signs. Of the 35 percent of kids who said they saw the signs, 59 percent said they believed them and 40 percent said they changed their behavior as a result.
The researchers found that adolescents who saw printed signs explaining the number of miles they would need to walk to burn off the calories were more likely to leave the store with a lower-calorie beverage, a healthier beverage or a smaller size beverage.
The implications of the study are promising for encouraging impressionable youths to make health-conscious beverage choices. “The greatest success is our finding that providing easily understandable calorie information — particularly in the form of miles of walking — encourages adolescents to make healthier beverage choices,” Bleich wrote. “And after the intervention, adolescents were also more likely to not buy any drink at all. In short, the intervention worked and it is simple and cost-effective.”
However, completing the study was not without difficulties. Bleich wrote that she and her colleagues had trouble finding corners stores that stocked water and diet soda, which was a requirement for the store to be in the study.
The study has opened new doors for future research on behavior modification and obesity prevention. “Ours is the first study of which I am aware which shows not only that easily understandable calorie information leads to healthy behavior but also that the behaviors persist after the intervention ends,” Bleich wrote. “My hope is that future work focused on the impact of menu-labeling on behavior will consider using easily understandable information, as that appears to be more persuasive for behavior change.”
The results of the study are relevant to the everyday lives of people nationwide. If Hopkins students knew they had to walk from the Bloomberg Center for Physics & Astronomy to Fells Point in order to burn off the calories in a 20 oz. bottle of soda, sports drink, or fruit juice, perhaps more students would opt to drink water instead.
Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The News-Letter.