Food labels showing how much exercise needed to burn off calories ‘have little impact’

Researchers conducted ‘largest study in real-world setting’ and found food labels showing how much to exercise made no difference, reports Mustafa Javid Qadri

(Getty/iStock/Loughborough University)

Food labels showing how much exercise is needed to burn off calories have only a limited impact on the food people buy at workplace canteens, a study suggests.

Researchers from Cambridge University carried out a large-scale study to look at the impact of labels on food and drink purchases and found no evidence that these labels resulted in an overall change in calories purchased from the labelled items.

They carried out an experiment across 10 workplace cafeterias in England over 12 weeks in 2021 and collected sales data from cafeterias ahead of the experiment. These labels displayed the minutes of walking that would be needed to burn off the calories in the product.