“Let me ask you a question: how many calories do you think the average woman should have each day?” says Herman Pontzer, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University whose specialism is metabolism. For a moment, I’m surprised. I’m the one supposed to be asking questions here—and besides, isn’t the answer widely known?
“2,000,” I reply, warily. “No!” he says, triumphantly. “Women burn around 2,400. Men, around 3,000. These figures are based on thousands of measurements, taken around the world. So when you look at calories on a label or menu and decide what you can eat based on an intake of 2,000, you’re starting with a made-up number. There’s no added information in knowing the calories.” In short, when it comes to calories, people aren’t very well equipped to add up.
But does it mean that they shouldn’t bother? That is the question begged by the British government’s new rule that, starting in April, restaurants and cafés with over 250 employees must showcase their calories. The reasoning behind it is simple enough: to help consumers make healthier decisions and encourage businesses to offer lower calorie options. The reality is, as ever, slightly more complex.
Let’s start with the hard facts: eating more calories than you burn leads to weight gain. Being overweight or obese—as 64 percent of adults in the UK are, as of 2019—is a risk factor for all sorts of diseases, and obesity costs the NHS billions of pounds each year. In that respect, says Herman, the measure gets one thing right: “Weight is affected by the calories you are eating, so there is sense in society focusing on calories. I like the idea that if people knew more, they would make good choices.” The problem, he continues, is that “there is no evidence that that’s true.”
On the contrary, in the U.S., where calories have been mandated on restaurant menus since 2018, obesity has continued to increase steadily. In New York, it seemed these menus encouraged some people to order dishes with more calories, not fewer—perhaps in a bid to get value for money, or (my personal theory) from a “fuck it” mentality. “I don’t know why. I’m not a psychologist. But the idea that people are overeating just because they don’t know the calories? I’m really not sure,” says Pontzer, whose latest book on metabolism, Burn, draws on 20 years of meticulous research into what happens to the energy we consume.
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