Calorie Labels That Work: This Soda Requires A 50-Minute Run

Want to get serious about cutting the sales of high-calorie sodas? Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health did, and they had an idea. A Johns Hopkins news release reports that the researchers posted the calorie information about a bottle of soda in three different forms at four corner stores in Baltimore. One notice read: “Did you know that a bottle of soda or fruit juice has about 250 calories?” Another read: “Did you know that a bottle of soda or fruit juice has about 10 percent of your daily calories?” And the third read: “Did you know that working off a bottle of soda or fruit juice takes about 50 minutes of running?” When the researchers looked that the data for 1,600 beverage sales, including 400 during a baseline period and 400 for each of the 3 caloric-condition interventions, they found that posting any calorie information reduced the odds of selling the beverage by 40 percent.  They also found that the most effective posting mentioned the physical activity needed to work off the calories. That reduced the likelihood of sales by 50 percent. Read more from Johns Hopkins.