Just how long does it take to burn off the calories from that fast food lunch you just ate?

It is no news that the western world is eating it's self to death out of laziness.  Yes, I know that sounds harsh, but most blame it on lack of time and too much stress.  Yes, we are all stressed with work, homes, kids, schools, after school activities, etc..  So, grabbing a McDonald's for lunch or ordering a pizza for dinner is so quick and easy and it has become the norm.  Moms and Dads tend to take the easy option and avoid planning home cooked meals due to lack of time.

A new study from Texas has found that if information as to how much exercise you would need to do in order to burn off the fast food you just ate is given a long with the calorie information of that meal then the consumers tend to make healthier choices.  It is a plan that has been devised to "scare" people into eating better.

So how long does it take?

We all burn calories in different ways, an overweight person will always burn more than a normal weight person.  The exercise information (based on a 68kg person) should be as follows:

• McDonald's Egg McMuffin - 300 calories - 32 minutes of running at 5mph
• Starbucks Cinnamon Roll - 500 calories and 85 minutes of dancing - nonstop
• Dunkin' Donuts Cholocalte Frosted Donut - 230 calories and 1 hour of walking at 3mph
• Wendy's Large French Fries - 540 calories and 77 minutes of cycling at 10-12 mph
• Taco Bell Beef Burrito Supreme - 410 calories and 70 minutes of dancing.
• Domino's slice of medium cheese pizza - 210 calories PER SLICE and 22 minutes of cycling at 12-14mph for each slice you ate.
• McDonald's Mighty Kids Meal of Double Cheeseburger, Fries and chocolate milk - 840 calories and a solid 4 hours and 3 minutes of frisbee-playing - do you really want to put your child through that?

The study, carried out by the Texas Christian University, to find new ways to help people make better choices, proposed adding the exercise information to the calorie information on the menus.  The principal investigator on the study, Meena Shah says that hers is the first study centered on examining the effects of knowing how long you would have to walk at a fast pace in order to burn off those calories, the results were presented at the Meeting for Experimental Biology 2013 held in Boston in April.

For the study, 300 men and women were recruited between 18 and 30 years of age who were invited to eat at fast food restaurants.  Without explaining the purpose of the study, a menu was assigned to each participant at random.  All the menus had the same appearance and consisted of a hamburger, chicken nuggets, salad, french fries, dessert, soda and water.  However there were 3 things that differentiated them:

1. The first menu was accompanied by calorie information and the amount of exercise needed to burn off what was chosen and then eaten by the participant.
2. The second menu was accompanied solely by the amount of calories associated to it.
3. The third menu didn't have any accompanying information.

I think it is fairly easy to guess that the participants that ate the fewest calories were those who chose from menu Nº1, followed by those who were given menu Nº2 and those that consumed the most calories were those who had menu Nº3.  The reasoning behind this is that for the general public, caloric information for food is difficult to understand, however the minutes or hours of physical exercise needed to burn it off is much easier to apply to daily life as it is easy to visualize the effort needed to eliminate those calories.

Meena Shah said that a lot of the participants were surprised to see just how much physical exercise is needed to burn off the calories from some of the menu options: 

"For example, a woman would have to walk vigorously for about 2 hours to burn off the calories from a double quarter pounder with cheese".

However, the authors have stated that the sample group was made up of people under the age of 30, which means that it would be erroneous to suggest that the results are representative for all the consumers of these types of foods.  Therefore, the team intends to repeat the study with a more diverse group with older people.

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