Counting calories. How under-reporting can explain the apparent fall in calorie intake

Key Points

• A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals.

• The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

The increase in weight as a consequence of 'every single adult in England jogging for around an hour less a day, every day, than they were in the 1970s', lacks all credibility.

Main

Harper H, Hallsworth M. The Behavioural Insights Team. London, 2016.

The key message from this 43-paged, scholarly and fully referenced report, is that, as with alcohol consumption (Eur J Public Health 2013;23: 1076–1081 – 'the missing eight units'), calorie intake would also appear to be underreported. As background, official statistics have described a large decline in calorie consumption; yet there has been an increase in population weight. One explanation would be a reduction in physical activity, but such an explanation is highly unlikely. Very much more probable is an underreporting of calorie intake. This is supported 1) indirectly by those studies that use the gold standard for energy expenditure (Doubly Labelled Water method) and 2) data from Kantar Worldpanel (what people buy, consume and their attitudes). The authors of this report, Behavioural Insights Team ('Nudge Unit'), is a social purpose company.