Choosing water to quench your thirst is a no brainer when counting calories

When you’re thirsty – what do you reach for ?

If you’re being perfectly honest, water probably wouldn’t be my first choice. Me neither.

Baltimore teens picked water

No it wasn’t flavoured water, but good old fashioned H₂0.

Curious as to how that happened ?

Researchers from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health just provided the facts. Instead of leaving the calorie count of the beverages tucked away in small print on the back of the packaging, the researchers made it larger than life.

Corner store counts

The researchers selected four corner stores located on the poorer side of town and provided a little additional calorie count information.

Supplementary signage was plastered on the outside of the fridges which contained the beverages.

The signage on the fridges put the calorie counts in perspective…, each location had a slightly different message..

“Did you know that a bottle of soda or fruit juice has about 250 calories?”

“Did you know that a bottle of soda or fruit juice has about 10 percent of your daily calories?”

“Did you know that working off a bottle of soda or fruit juice takes about 50 minutes of running?”

In the last location, no additional signage was provided.

The maths is off-putting

Did you realise that for the first 50 minutes (give or take) of your workout, you would be running on the soda/fruit juice.

I’m guessing not. Now you know that, bet the water is looking way more attractive.

Baltimore teenagers did the maths

The teenagers of Baltimore also suddenly found water a much more appealing option.

Providing additional signage decreased the odds of a sugar-sweetned beverage being purchased by 40 %.

Connecting the calorie count with a gym workout cut the odds by 50 %.

Time for you to do the maths too

Liquid calories are often implicated in the obesity epidemic. And, just in case you haven’t heard – obesity is not so good for your health long term.

Weight management is all about getting

Calories in = calories out.

Let’s face it, it is demoralizing to realize that to just keep things equal i.e. not put on more weight , you have to exercise for approx 50 minutes following a can of coke.

Coke tastes good and all that, but most of the time that coke really isn’t worth the monumental effort to burn it off.

Cut the liquid calories

You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to figure out the maths, cutting those liquid calories makes a lot of sense.

PS. If you down a glass of water before dinner, it will have the added benefit of cutting the other calories you consume as well as enhancing the effect of that gym workout. You are doing the gym workout, aren’t you ?

Reduction in Purchases of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Among Low-Income, Black Adolescents After Exposure to Caloric Information.  American Journal of Public Health: (2012)  102(2): 329-335.  Sara N. Bleich, Bradley J. Herring, Desmond D. Flagg, MPH, Tiffany L. Gary-Webb

 

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Further reading

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