What Should We Put on the Front of the Food Label To Help Control Our Eating?
Published Oct 20, 2010
Last week, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) (which “is an independent, nonprofit organization that works outside of government to provide unbiased and authoritative advice to decision makers and the public”), came out with a report on what should be put on the front of food labels to help solve the obesity crisis.
One of the IOM’s main conclusions was that calorie and serving size information should be prominently displayed in the front of the package. I agree. This would be an improvement, but I would argue that most people don’t exactly know what a calorie means. They think they know, but it’s confusing. There are two issues. 1) We don’t really have a solid understanding of the value of a calorie. 2) We often underestimate the number of calories in the foods we eat.
Even among those who should have more knowledge about food values, errors of judgment are not uncommon. For example, in one study, registered dietitians underestimated their caloric consumption by 16 percent. Another study testing the ability of registered dietitians to estimate calories found underestimates of 200 to 600 calories. Other health professionals, including physicians and nurses, are not significantly better at making these estimates. In one study, 70 percent of the participants incorrectly estimated patients’ calorie needs by more or less than 13 percent.
We are also duped by advertising and marketing. The concept of calorie information and perception of “healthier foods” does not always lead to calorie understanding. In a study at Cornell, researchers intercepted 300 customers as they finished their lunches at McDonald’s or Subway. The participants were asked to estimate the number of calories that they had just consumed.
Customers at McDonald’s consumed approximately 710 calories and estimated an intake of 670 calories, whereas those at Subway ate 560 calories but estimated 335 calories. In this case, individuals who ate at Subway assumed they had a larger “calorie budget” (i.e., they assumed they could eat more) because foods at Subway were promoted as “healthier” and no point-of-sale nutritional information was provided. If individuals eat more of a food choice because it is perceived to be healthy, it could potentially counteract the intended benefits of promoting healthier food choices.
What’s my suggestion? I have always been an advocate of exercise equivalents, or the amount of activity needed to burn off foods after an individual expends the calories needed for daily subsistence. Exercise equivalents are based on metabolic equivalents (METS), which is a commonly used method for demonstrating the energy cost of physical activity or how many calories are burned by being physically active.
Here is how I see the food label changing, similar to cigarette labels. Right smack on the front of the package of cookies or any packaged foods, we would see the following:
WARNING: Eating one cookie will require 18 minutes of walking to burn off. Think Before You Eat!
Can you imagine the first time a shopper saw that big on the front of a package? I’ve always felt it would change the way people viewed food. In fact, I wrote an entire book with exercise equivalents called The Diet Detective’s Count Down. I took 7,500 foods and have the calories, carbs, fat and exercise equivalents for walking, running, cycling, yoga and dance. (You can see a report about this on ABC News Nightline.)
Think of it this way: What if you went to a foreign country and walked into a furniture store. You want an antique bed, but everything is priced in “cruma.” The price tag on the bed you love reads 5 million cruma. This could mean $500, or could be $5,000, or even $15,000. Now you might be able to guess a certain range based on quality, but that would be a pretty wide range. If you found out the couch was only $500, you’d be excited and you’d definitely buy it. But if, on the other hand, it was $15,000 and out of your budget, you would probably pass it up because it just wasn’t affordable. Just like calories right?
Let me know what you think… should we petition the IOM? Maybe the FDA too?