Is Calorie Information Helpful? With Dr Giles Yeo
Automatic TRANSCRIPT
It's an interesting time. Let's put it that way in the uk. It's been a crazy kind of year and at the moment menus are soon going to be full of calories. Now you've got to count about calories. And i was wondering if you think that this should be becoming part of the conversation is a good thing a bad thing. You know i'm gonna give you maybe a surprisingly nuanced answer. I think clearly we are in a middle of a situation in which the vast majority of noncommunicable diseases not infectious diseases we are clearly in the middle of infectious disease pandemic but non infectious diseases that we face today are diet related. Okay this is true so clearly. There's something about our food environment and how we interact and how our relationship with food which needs fixing and part of that is more information. And i think that is probably going to be helpful. But is the calorie. The right information to have i guess is is the question i'm going to give a depends on what we using it for so my colleagues here in cambridge that this is not was not work. That was done by me. They have shown that calorie information at point of purchase. Your coffee shop for example you walk by and the muffin is four hundred calories type of thing that that that information on average makes a person eight percent less likely to buy the food and hence presumably consume consumed the food. So i think what calorie information does at point of purchase in cafes restaurants is to give people pause for thought it makes people think i do i do. I need this food. Not case there is some use bought. Is it useful as a piece of information to let you know how healthy something is if something four hundred calories does it mean as healthy is. It's healthiest something. That's five hundred calories and there is going to be no.