We deal with numbers every day, from the message alerts bouncing on our cell phone screens to the balances increasing or decreasing in our bank accounts, numbers seem to be a part of our lives. However, in the world of food and drink, there is a special set of numbers that lie quietly in the corner of menus but are often baffling - yes, they are calorie labels.
Calorie labelling sounds like a “magic number” on the road to weight loss, but the truth may surprise you - it's more like a puzzling “numbers game”. It turns out that the calorie numbers on restaurant menus don't seem to work any magic on our eating habits. Why? Because most people look at these numbers like they're reading a book and mutter, “What the hell does that mean?”
You walk into an elegantly decorated café, ready to enjoy a leisurely afternoon tea. In the face of a wide range of food, you are hesitant, suddenly, a light flashes - the menu, under each dish, is labelled with a series of mysterious numbers; they are calorie labels. You are delighted and think you have found the “golden key” to healthy eating, but when you try to decipher these numbers, you find yourself in a “digital fog”.
In some regions or countries, to let everyone eat healthier, the growing “little pudendum” team came up with a trick: let restaurants, takeaway stores, and cafes put each dish next to the calorie label. In this way, we have to weigh before ordering food, and the results have been shocking - people's eating habits are still the same, buy, eat the number of calories froze a little bit did not reduce! It turns out that people are still confused about these numbers and don't know what they mean. The researchers were not ambiguous; they, from the bar to the restaurant, from the cafe to the fast food restaurant, collected young and old men and women ordering data. It turned out that women, older people and the wealthy were pretty much on board with these calorie labels, especially those who were leisurely flipping through the menu at the bar and were probably slightly more sensitive to the numbers because they had the time to look at them a little more closely.
Studies have shown that the public is not well informed about calorie information. Those lone numbers are like comic strips without a backstory, making it difficult to glean valuable information from them. We may know that too many calories can lead to weight gain, but we are often confused about how many calories are “too many” and how calories vary from one food to another. It's like searching for a destination in an unfamiliar city, with only an address but no map, and we're left to stumble around blindly. Similarly, in the face of calorie labelling, if we lack the necessary nutritional knowledge, we can only choose foods based on feelings or intuition, which undoubtedly increases the difficulty of healthy eating.
So why is calorie information so foreign to the public? There may be many reasons, but the following points may provide us with some insights. When we were growing up, schools tended to focus more on the transfer of knowledge and neglected education on healthy eating. Many people's understanding of nutrition is limited to a few concepts in textbooks, but they know little about how to apply this knowledge to their daily lives. Secondly, the influence of media and advertisements should not be underestimated. In this era of information explosion, we are attracted by various food pictures and attractive advertisements every day. These messages often emphasise the taste and delicacy of the food but seldom mention its nutritional value and calorie content. This kind of publicity, which emphasises taste but not nutrition, has undoubtedly aggravated the public's neglect of calorie information.
Lastly, the attitude of the catering industry also warrants reflection. Although many countries and regions have required restaurants and food manufacturers to label calorie information on packages, the enforcement and supervision efforts are uneven. Some businesses may deliberately blur calorie labels or place them in inconspicuous locations to attract customers. Such irresponsible behaviour has undoubtedly exacerbated public confusion about calorie information.
