The study was led by Professor Amanda Daley and colleagues from the University’s School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences. This so-called physical activity calorie equivalent (PACE) labelling was also found to be more popular among people aged under 65 years and those who are more physically active during a typical week.
Professor Daley said: “Nutritional labels support people to make food choices and traffic light labelling is the UK standard. However, many people do not understand the meaning of kilocalories (kcals or calories) or grams of fat displayed on food labels, and often underestimate the number of calories when labelling is not provided.
“PACE provides another approach to nutrition labelling by providing calorie information with a meaningful interpretation of what the calorie content of the food means in terms of energy expenditure. It aims to illustrate how many minutes of physical activity are equivalent to the calories contained in food and drinks. For example: ‘calories in this cake requires 90 minutes of walking to burn off’. Some mobile phone apps for nutrition already incorporate PACE information.”
She says that while there is some evidence that PACE labelling may be effective in reducing calorie consumption, there is a lack of evidence about the views of the public around implementing food settings. So this new study obtained data from a nationally representative sample of adults recruited via the UK Ipsos KnowledgePanel.
Of the 2,668 participants, slightly more (43%) preferred existing traffic lights to (33%) PACE labelling, though more participants (41% compared to 27%) reported PACE was easier to understand and more likely to catch their attention (49% compared to 31%).
Respondents who were physically active at least 3–4 times per week and 5 or more times per week were 42% and 45% more likely, respectively, to report PACE would catch their attention more than traffic light labelling, compared with participants who were active 0–2 times per week.
More participants thought PACE was more likely to help them avoid high calorie food than traffic light labelling (44% compared to 28%). Those aged 65 years and older said they were 40% less likely to prefer PACE over traffic light labelling compared with the youngest group (18-44-years-old).
There was a preference for PACE labelling to be placed on discretionary foods, for example chocolate and cakes, rather than ‘every day’ food items like bread, pasta, fruit and vegetables.
And a distinct preference, too, for PACE to be displayed in fast food outlets, supermarkets, on takeaway/online menus and on vending machines - all locations that typically sell energy-dense food and drinks.
Professor Daley concluded: “Our findings highlight that PACE labelling is a potentially important policy-based approach to strengthen current approaches to food labelling. The next steps are to test whether PACE labelling reduces the purchases of high calorie foods and drinks in different food settings such as restaurants, vending machines, coffee shops and pubs.”