It's the end of the year!

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So, the end of 2011 is upon us. The holiday season is a festive, joyous time, filled with parties, gifts, family reunions, and for those of us as Enzaim, a week off of work (yay!). But, it is not without its consequences. The vast quantities of food and drink consumed during this time, coupled with the inactivity from the bone-chilling cold, often result in significant weight gain during the winter. We pack on the pounds (or kilograms) now, only to have to work extra hard to shed them once the weather warms. This endless dance is a ritual many go through year after year, likely to the detriment of our health.

Is there anything we can do to combat this? Is it possible (or realistic) to not overeat in the presence of so much delicious food? Conventional wisdom in the U.S. tells those of us who are looking to lose weight or prevent weight gain to watch our caloric intake. An entire industry has been spawned focused on low calorie foods. Of course from a theoretical standpoint, this is completely true. Fat is just the body's way of storing excess energy (calories), and if there is no excess energy, there is no fat/weight gain. But it's not that cut and dry. The problem is that for many people, calorie count is just an abstract number that is hard to relate to real world consequences. For example, let's say you have a piece of cake and you know it contains 300 calories. How much weight would you gain from that piece of cake? If you wanted to prevent that weight gain, how much exercise would you need to do? I know that I could not answer these questions off the top of my head. Studies have already shown that displaying the caloric content of food does little to affect consumption patterns. Would information on the amount exercise needed to burn off the calories gained from food be any better?

A piece from Scientific American covers a study that says it would.  Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University took a look how different nutritional information affected the consumption patterns of African American teenagers. In different stores, they posted signs saying:

 “Did you know that a bottle of soda or fruit juice has about 250 calories?”

 “Did you know that a bottle of soda or fruit juice has about 10% of your daily calories?”

 “Did you know that working off a bottle of soda or fruit juice takes about 50 minutes of running?”

The first two signs had no effect on purchasing patterns, while the third sign, talking about energy in the form of exercise equivalents halved the teenagers' likelihood of purchasing those drinks. Of course, the population sample is small and very restricted, so a broader follow-up study would be nice, but to me, it sounds like a promising idea and could make for a good public health campaign. To my Korean readers, what do you think about this? In Korea, do people who are weight conscious count calories?  When you eat, are you concerned about the caloric content of your food? If I told you that the Starbucks cafe latte you drank this morning would take 2 hours of jogging to burn off, would you be less likely to drink it in the future?

That's it for this post.  Have a great holiday season and a happy new year, everyone!