奇速英语

食物菜单标明运动量可帮助食客减少热量摄入

Menus showing the exercise needed to burn calories(卡路里) in meals can help people eat less, a US study suggests.

Diners given this extra information ordered and ate less calorific(高热量的) food than other customers, a team at Texas Christian University found. Customers may be told how many calories a cheeseburger has. But if they know that it takes two hours of fast walking to burn off a cheeseburger, they will benefit more.

They now plan larger experiments. Researchers Dr Meena Shah and Ashlei James divided 300 volunteers aged 18 to 30 into three groups. One received a menu without any calorie information, another menus with the calories showed, and the third menus that showed both calories and the amount of exercise needed to burn them off. All of the menus offered the same choice of food and drink, which included burgers, sandwiches, salad, chips, soft drinks and water. None of the volunteers knew the reason for the study and the researchers took into consideration hunger levels when explaining their findings.

The group given the menus with the extra information about how much fast walking would be needed to burn off the food ordered and ate much less than the group who had menus with no calorie information. They took in 100 fewer calories, on average, as a result.

Dr Shah said, “This is the first study to look at the effects of showing minutes of fast walking needed to burn food calories on the calories ordered and took in. This study suggests there are benefits.” The researchers say fast walking is something nearly everyone can think of.

“We can’t put this experiment result to a population over age 30, so we will find more information about this in an older and more diverse group,” Dr Shah added.