Though the coronavirus pandemic seems to be fading away, the obesity epidemic is certainly not. 63% of adults in England are overweight or obese and more alarmingly, 40% of children leave school in the same category. It's not just school-leavers: obesity in 4–5-year-olds rose from 9.9% in 2019-20 to 14.4% in 2020-21. Change is vital for our society to thrive. 

A new law came into force on 6th April 2022, requiring business with more than 250 employees to display the calories of non-packaged food and drink. The aim of this was to help customers make more informed decisions on what they consume. There are merits, but also flaws with this policy.

Firstly, it is crucial to note that weight gain is purely due to calories in, calories out; that fact has been obscured through misinformation online (discounting extremely rare medical conditions). This is even true in people with an underactive thyroid; they burn fewer calories, thus the calorie in, calorie out fact still applies. In this regard, knowing what calories we are about to consume is vital for loosing, or maintaining weight. In my personal experience, seeing the calories has been an eye-opening experience. For example, at one burger restaurant, the fries were just over 1000 calories – that’s half the daily recommend calorie intake for women! By knowing what you’re putting in your body, you may well be drawn to ordering the lower calorie option.

There are some drawbacks to this new law, however: just because something is ‘lower calorie,’ doesn’t make it ‘healthier.’

A slice of cake may be less calories than the steak main meal, but this doesn’t make the cake better for you. People may be tempted to use the tool of comparison to actually end up eating more than they would have if they didn’t know the nutritional information: “the cheesecake is less than the sticky toffee pudding, so I’ll get the cheesecake.” However, they may not have even considered getting a dessert in the first place, if they hadn’t had seen the calories. Additionally, people with eating disorders, or who are recovering from one, may find calories being waved in their face unhelpful for recovering mentally and physically.

Despite these unintended, negative effects, it’s still crucial to highlight that calories in, calories out is the golden rule for weight loss, and that’s the most important thing to battle the obesity epidemic.

Overall, I do think this policy is a good one. Or a step in the right direction. It doesn’t change the fact that in order to tackle an issue as widespread and ingrained in our culture as obesity is, we must focus on education, especially of the future generation, where the unhealthy habits of their parents haven’t been solidified yet. In two years, obesity increased in age 4–5-year-olds by 5%. 5%! Most adults know what is healthy and unhealthy, but they’ve had decades of enforcing poor eating habits, a very difficult thing to break. There’s still time to prevent the next generation from being weighed down by the struggles of obesity.