[00:46.10]ADAM:OK Rosie, shall we try to get some ideas together for our presentation on diet and obesity?
[00:52.77]ROSIE:Sure.
[00:53.83]ADAM:I can talk about the experiment I did to see if people can tell the difference between real sugar and artificial sweeteners.
[01:01.14]ROSIE:Where you gave people drinks with either sugar or artificial sweeteners and they had to say which they thought it was?
[01:07.85]ADAM:Yeah. It took me ages to decide exactly how l'd organise it, especially how I could make sure that people didn't know which drink I was giving them.
[01:17.31]It was hard to keep track of it all, especially as I had so many people doing it - I had to make sure I kept a proper record of what each person had had.
[01:27.58]ROSIE:So could most people tell the difference?
[01:30.53]ADAM:Yeah-I hadn't thought they would be able to, but most people could.
[01:35.25]ROSIE:Then there's that experiment I did measuring the fat content of nuts, to see if the nutritional information given on the packet was accurate.
[01:45.26]ADAM:The one where you ground up the nuts and mixed them with a chemical to absorb the fat?
[01:50.27]ROSIE:Yes.My results were a bit problematic - the fat content for that type of nut seemed much lower than it said on the package.
[01:59.26]But I reckon the package information was right.
[02:02.48]I think I should probably have ground up the nuts more than I did.
[02:06.53]It's possible that the scales for weighing the fat weren't accurate enough, too.
[02:11.22]I'd really like to try the experiment again some time.
[03:16.50]ADAM:So what can we say about helping people to lose weight?
[03:20.69]There's a lot we could say about what restaurants could do to reduce obesity.
[03:25.18]I read that the items at the start of a menu and the items at the end of a menu are much more likely to be chosen than the items in the middle.
[03:34.18]So, if you put the low-calorie items at the beginning and end of the menu, people will probably go for the food with fewer calories, without even realising what they're doing.
[03:43.53]ROSIE:I think food manufacturers could do more to encourage healthy eating.
[03:50.66]ADAM:How?
[03:51.41]ROSIE:Well, when manufacturers put calorie counts of a food on the label,they're sometimes really confusing and I suspect they do it on purpose.
[04:00.77]Because food that's high in calories tastes better, and so they'll sell more.
[04:06.06]ADAM:Yeah, so if you look at the amount of calories in a pizza, they'll give you the calories per quarter pizza and you think, oh that's not too bad.
[04:15.63]But who's going to eat a quarter pizza?
[04:18.23]ROSIE:Exactly.
[04:19.50]ADAM:I suppose another approach to this problem is to get people to exercise more.
[04:24.70]ROSIE:Right. In England, the current guidelines are for at least 30 minutes of brisk walking, five days a week.
[04:32.54]Now when you ask them, about 40% of men and 30% of women say they do this, but when you objectively measure the amount of walking they do with motion sensors, you find that only 6% of men and 4% of women do the recommended amount of exercise.
[04:52.44]ADAM:Mm,so you can see why obesity is growing.
[04:55.49]ROSIE:So how can people be encouraged to take more exercise?
[05:00.45]ADAM:Well, for example, think of the location of stairs in a train station.
[05:06.04]If people reach the stairs before they reach the escalator when they're leaving the station, they're more likely to take the stairs.
[05:14.34]And if you increase the width of the stairs, you'll get more people using them at the same time.
[05:20.55]It's an unconscious process and influenced by minor modifications in their environment.
[05:26.80]ROSIE:Right. And it might not be a big change, but if it happens every day, it all adds up.
[05:33.12]ADAM:Yes. But actually, I'm not sure if we should be talking about exercise in our presentation.
[05:38.79]ROSIE:Well, we've done quite a bit of reading about it.
[05:42.00]ADAM:I know, but it's going to mean we have a very wide focus, and our tutor did say that we need to focus on causes and solutions in terms of nutrition.
[05:52.34]ROSIE:I suppose so. And we've got plenty of information about that. OK, well that will be simpler.
[06:00.58]ADAM:So what shall we do now? We've still got half an hour before our next lecture.
[06:05.95]ROSIE:Let's think about what we're going to include and what will go where. Then we can decide what slides we need.
[06:12.82]ADAM:OK, fine.
