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

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.

A physical activity calorie-equivalent, or Pace, label had information showing the packaging that a 1,014kcal “large battered haddock” portion would take upwards of five hours of walking to burn off.

Before adding Pace labels, most labels and menus featured only the product name and price, though some products included the standard front-of-pack nutrition labels.

The cafeterias included calorie information and Pace labels alongside food and drinks items and on items including hot meals, sandwiches, cold drinks and desserts but the team found no evidence that these labels resulted in an overall change in energy purchased from labelled items.

Senior author of the study, Professor Dame Theresa Marteau, said: “This is the largest study in a real-world setting to look at the impact of Pace labels on food and drink purchases, examining 250,000 transactions across 10 worksite cafeterias.

“The findings suggest that Pace labels, contrary to expectations, may have little or no impact on the food people buy in worksite cafeterias.”

The number of calories purchased from items that did not feature the Pace labels did not change and the labels made little difference to the revenue for the cafeterias, just a small increase of 3 pence per transaction.

The research is published in the journal PLOS Medicine.