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How long will it take to burn off these calories?: The controversial next step in nutrition labeling – The London Free Press

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Critics say putting exercise calorie counts on food packaging would only reinforce the notion that exercise earns people the right to eat ‘crappy foods’


A traditional nutrition label. Studies show the public consistently underestimates the number of calories in food. “Just putting numbers on a packet really has no relevance.”


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According to scientists, Brits consume, on average, 6,000 calories on Christmas Day alone.

So, in an experiment published last year in the British Medical Journal, U.K. researchers explored whether providing people with the amount of exercise required to burn off the calories in, say, a single piece of mincemeat pie (21 minutes of running) or one small Christmas pudding (a staggering 110-minute run) would help prevent weight gain over the holidays.

In fact, they found participants in the “brief intervention” group exposed to this new kind of food labelling ended the holidays weighing 0.5 kg less, on average, than a comparison group.

Now, in a new review and analysis that pooled data from 14 randomized controlled trials, some of the same collaborators are reporting that when labeling known as PACE — physical activity calorie equivalent — is displayed on menu items, people consume, on average, 65 fewer calories per meal compared with other types of labeling, or no labeling.

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It may not sound like much. However, the average person eats three meals a day, plus two snacks — five separate eating occasions where PACE might nudge people to reduce their total calorie intake by 200 to 250 calories a day, said Amanda Daley, of the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University.

“In the U.K., the guidance is that if you want to lose weight then you should look for a deficit of 500 calories per day, so already you could see how PACE could cut into that 500 calories,” she said.

The Royal Society for Public Health in the U.K. is already calling for PACE labeling on the front of food packaging.

But not everyone is so enthralled. Some worry it could lead to an exercise/eating disorder nightmare. “We know that many people with eating disorders struggle with excessive exercising, so being told exactly how much exercise it would take to burn off particular foods risks exacerbating their symptoms,” Tom Quinn, of the eating disorders charity Beat, told the BBC.

“Quite honestly, we have as a society, over quite a long time really, only focused on exercise as a means to manage weight or burn calories when it is poor at both,” said obesity specialist Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa.

One advantage around PACE is that it tells people what it takes to burn that muffin or that Frappuccino

Freedhoff’s issue with the idea of putting exercise calorie counts on food packaging is that it would reinforce those messages, as well as the notion that exercise earns people the right to eat “crappy foods.” (In a related tweet, he also worried it could reinforce weight bias by suggesting people struggling with obesity are “lazy gluttons.”)

The idea that some “magical set of instructions” will lead everybody to make healthier choices is, well, magical thinking, he said, when the wider problem is the constant provision of junk food at every turn.

“And if you discourage the consumption of junk food and simultaneously discourage people from exercising, I don’t think that’s a public health win,” Freedhoff said.

Daley, however, argues that traditional nutritional labeling is difficult for the public to grasp and doesn’t provide any context or meaning. Many people don’t understand the meanings of calories or grams of fat in terms of energy balance, she and her coauthors wrote, and studies show the public consistently underestimates the number of calories in food. “Just putting numbers on a packet really has no relevance,” Daley said.

“One advantage around PACE is that it tells people what it takes to burn that muffin or that Frappuccino,” she said. It could help people decide whether the calories are “worth it.”


“We have as a society, over quite a long time really, only focused on exercise as a means to manage weight or burn calories when it is poor at both.”

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Some festive examples include: one thick slice of roast turkey (roughly 100 calories) would require 16 minutes of walking, three large roast potatoes (161 calories) 27 minutes of walking and one small Christmas pudding (1,280 calories) 110 minutes of running.

According to the formula, 100 calories is about 10 minutes of running and 20 minutes of walking for an 80kg man (the average weight for a man).

Daley said there is no evidence to date that physical activity campaigns lead to unhealthy or disordered eating. Obesity is related to cancer deaths, cardiovascular deaths and stroke, among other killers. “We’re interested in trying to save lives from those diseases,” she said.

Ultimately the researchers would like PACE to be seen on labels in supermarkets, on packages, and particularly on menus in restaurants and fast food outlets. “All those types of places where we eat high-calorie foods would be a really good place to start.”

There are some caveats: Most of the studies Daley and colleagues analyzed were small, and based on lab settings or “hypothetical meal selection scenarios,” not real life ones.

• Email: skirkey@postmedia.com | Twitter:

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Whooping cough is at a decade-high level in US

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MILWAUKEE (AP) — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.

There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.

The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.

Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.

Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.

Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.

“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.

Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.

But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.

That includes his own teenage daughter.

“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.

It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.

“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”

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AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Scientists show how sperm and egg come together like a key in a lock

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How a sperm and egg fuse together has long been a mystery.

New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.

“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.

The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.

Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.

It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.

Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.

Eventually, Pauli said, such work could help other scientists understand infertility better or develop new birth control methods.

The work provides targets for the development of male contraceptives in particular, said David Greenstein, a genetics and cell biology expert at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study.

The latest study “also underscores the importance of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry,” he said in an email.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Older patients, non-English speakers more likely to be harmed in hospital: report

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Patients who are older, don’t speak English, and don’t have a high school education are more likely to experience harm during a hospital stay in Canada, according to new research.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information measured preventableharmful events from 2023 to 2024, such as bed sores and medication errors,experienced by patients who received acute care in hospital.

The research published Thursday shows patients who don’t speak English or French are 30 per cent more likely to experience harm. Patients without a high school education are 20 per cent more likely to endure harm compared to those with higher education levels.

The report also found that patients 85 and older are five times more likely to experience harm during a hospital stay compared to those under 20.

“The goal of this report is to get folks thinking about equity as being a key dimension of the patient safety effort within a hospital,” says Dana Riley, an author of the report and a program lead on CIHI’s population health team.

When a health-care provider and a patient don’t speak the same language, that can result in the administration of a wrong test or procedure, research shows. Similarly, Riley says a lower level of education is associated with a lower level of health literacy, which can result in increased vulnerability to communication errors.

“It’s fairly costly to the patient and it’s costly to the system,” says Riley, noting the average hospital stay for a patient who experiences harm is four times more expensive than the cost of a hospital stay without a harmful event – $42,558 compared to $9,072.

“I think there are a variety of different reasons why we might start to think about patient safety, think about equity, as key interconnected dimensions of health-care quality,” says Riley.

The analysis doesn’t include data on racialized patients because Riley says pan-Canadian data was not available for their research. Data from Quebec and some mental health patients was also excluded due to differences in data collection.

Efforts to reduce patient injuries at one Ontario hospital network appears to have resulted in less harm. Patient falls at Mackenzie Health causing injury are down 40 per cent, pressure injuries have decreased 51 per cent, and central line-associated bloodstream infections, such as IV therapy, have been reduced 34 per cent.

The hospital created a “zero harm” plan in 2019 to reduce errors after a hospital survey revealed low safety scores. They integrated principles used in aviation and nuclear industries, which prioritize safety in complex high-risk environments.

“The premise is first driven by a cultural shift where people feel comfortable actually calling out these events,” says Mackenzie Health President and Chief Executive Officer Altaf Stationwala.

They introduced harm reduction training and daily meetings to discuss risks in the hospital. Mackenzie partnered with virtual interpreters that speak 240 languages and understand medical jargon. Geriatric care nurses serve the nearly 70 per cent of patients over the age of 75, and staff are encouraged to communicate as frequently as possible, and in plain language, says Stationwala.

“What we do in health care is we take control away from patients and families, and what we know is we need to empower patients and families and that ultimately results in better health care.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.

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