It is interesting to think of calories in a context of general knowledge because, well, what is a calorie? A calorie, as the average person may be able to identify it, is that number on the back of food containers that correlates with serving sizes, telling you how much you can eat before reaching your daily food intake.

Both are very vague numbers though, and it is rather difficult to conceptualize it in a way that actually brings it to physicality. A Calorie is actually a kilocalorie, or 1,000 calories, and one calorie  — with a lowercase “c” — is the amount of energy necessary to heat one gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. Even then, as a measure of energy, it is completely vague as to how that manifests itself in our daily behavior and diet. The result of poor nutritional understanding is the current American obesity epidemic, and so it comes to a point of necessity to realize that we need effective means of helping people comprehend what it really means when you eat a Big Mac. Menus that display caloric intake are a necessary step to curbing this issue.

A study was done and presented at the Experimental Biology 2013 meeting in Boston, Mass. two weeks ago, indicating that people make healthier decisions in their food intake when they realize what it physically requires to metabolize. People respond to negative incentives. The human mind is more likely to react to things that are detrimental or that they find unpleasant more so than being rewarded.

For instance, a Big Mac is 550 Calories. To burn off a Big Mac, you would have to do one hour of brisk walking or more strenuous activity like jogging for 30 minutes. For those people that are mindful of their weight, which according to a survey by the International Food Information Council is around 70 percent of Americans, this presents a dilemma: these activities are both time-consuming and present a physical strain. The opportunity costs therefore outweigh the consumption of this burger. The graphs and figures illustrate the physical metabolism of 550 Calories of energy in a language that is understandable because otherwise it is very difficult to grasp what burning 550 Calories looks like.

There are a few contentions to the idea of displaying this information and holding restaurants, particularly fast-food restaurants, accountable for making these distinctions clear. Some argue that mandating this information equates to quelling the restaurant’s freedom of speech, but I argue that withholding this information is selfish and harmful, in the same way that if a pharmaceutical company decides to withhold a drug’s side effects. If research shows it encourages healthy eating, and if it holds little cost to multibillion dollar enterprises, then there is no reason not to do it, lest we risk letting the obesity epidemic explode.

A version of this article appeared in the April 30 print edition. Nikolas Reda-Castelao is a staff columnist. Email him at [email protected].