We might be told how many calories are contained in a meal, but that information can be abstract, so we don't really respond to it. But we do if we are told how much exercise might be needed to work that meal off. Here's their example about how this information might be best communicated:
A study by researchers at UNC’s medical school, published in the journal Appetite, showed the kind of choices people make when randomly presented with different types of menus with differing levels of nutritional information: one with no nutritional info, one with calorie info, one with calories plus the minutes of walking required to burn the calories, and a fourth with calories plus the distance required to burn off the calories.
"People who viewed the menu without nutritional information ordered a meal totaling 1,020 calories, on average, significantly more than the average 826 calories ordered by those who viewed menus that included information about walking-distance," writes Scientific American. People who saw the menu with walking-distance info also ordered less than people who just saw calorie info.
Such a finding goes along with what researchers at Johns Hopkins have found. Signs posted on beverage cases in a convenience store about how much exercise it would take to burn off a bottle of soda (about 50 minutes of running) were much better at dissuading adolescents from buying sugary drinks than signs with just the calorie content. The researchers at UNC say they’re interested in bringing their study into the real-world as well--starting with the university cafeteria.
I always think information like this call to question the degree of free will and autonomous decision making power we have. Our decisions seem easily influenced.
