Food for thought, or for Exercise in this Case

How would you feel about knowing how long it would take to run/walk off the food you ate at a restaurant?

After the health care bill was upheld by the Supreme Court last year, one of the requirement was for all restaurants with more than 20 locations to post the calorie content of all of their menu items.

To me, I was thinking "Hey that's great! Maybe people will start paying more attention to what they are eating, and rethink that 900 calorie sandwich."

Unfortunately this isn't what happened. In the past year since the calories have been posted on the menus there has been no real change in what people are choosing.

CNN reported this week that TCU has been researching if people would choose foods differently if the amount of time it would take to burn off the foods were posted on the menu. According to their research, this decreased the amount of calories the individuals ordered and the amount of calories they ate.

Personally I think this is a phenomenal idea and might be a better way to start getting people's attention at how many calories are in their fast food choices. Rather than saying 1800 calories in a side of french fries and hamburger, which some people a little nutrition education may be able to make sense of in the grand scheme of what we eat everyday, almost all of us can comprehend 6 hours of brisk walking to walk off that amount.

Have you chosen foods differently since the calories have been posted? What do you think about posting the time it would take to burn off the calories?