A recent study from Public Health England observed the purchasing habits of teenagers and found that they are, in fact, less apt to buy sugary drinks—and opt, instead, for water—when provided with information explaining how much exercise would be required to drink the former.
The study reports that the most effective sign, apparently, explained that it would take five miles to walk off 250 calories of a sugary drink.
Dr Sara Bleich is associate professor at the Bloomberg School at John Hopkins University. She was also lead study author and she said that its really a matter of context—people don’t understand calories in terms of numbers on a label.
She details “What our research found is that when you explain calories in an easily understandable way such as how many miles of walking is needed to burn them off, you can encourage behaviour change.”
Over the course of six weeks, brightly coloured signs stuck posted around corner shops in neighborhoods in Baltimore—out in the open and in full public view of young customers buying beverages. Four different types of signs were used in the experiment. Two of the sign translated calories in the drinks into the amount exercise it would require to burn off the calories. One type of sign simply stated it would take 50 minutes of running to burn off 250 calories—the equivalent of 16 teaspoons of sugar—of a 590ml bottle of a soda or sports drink or fruit juice. The final type of sign listed the sugar content and calories of each drink available.
To determine the efficacy of the signs, though, the researchers interviewed children between the ages of 12 and 18 who had left the shop. Only 35 percent of the children they asked actually saw the signs. However, 59 percent of those who saw the signs said they believed the signs and 40 percent said it changed their behavior because of the signs.
Source: www.diabetesinsider.com