Could this be a decisive blow in battle against junk food temptation? – leader comment

Telling customers how much they are eating in terms of how much exercise they must do to burn off the calories sounds like (sort of) a good idea.

We love it, even though we know it’s probably killing us. High-calorie junk food is one of the major causes of the obesity crisis, but given it’s loaded with sugar, fat and salt – all things we have evolved to crave because once they were in short supply – we sometimes just cannot help but tuck in.

“One won’t hurt,” we tell ourselves, then suddenly we’ve polished off the jumbo-sized packet that was on special offer in the supermarket that’s more like a huge sweetie shop.

However, now the Royal Society for Public Health has come up with a way to help us realise just how much we are eating – labels revealing how many minutes or miles of exercise would be required to burn off the calories.

Some my feel annoyed by being guilt-tripped by food packaging when they fancy a biscuit or a packet of crisps.

However, while we sometimes don’t want to hear what’s good for us and what’s not, it is hard to argue for the benefits of ignorance.

The more knowledge we have, the likelier we will make better choices – even if it’s just leaving a single chocolate biscuit in the packet.