Displaying the amount of time you’d need to jog in order to burn off the calories from a sugary drink, rather than showing a calorie count, may be more effective in dissuading you from consuming those beverages, new research suggests.

Researchers observed teenagers at stores in West Baltimore, where signs displayed either calorie counts, calorie counts as a percent of recommended daily calorie intake, or the time spent jogging that would be needed to burn off those calories. While all led teenagers to purchase fewer sugary beverages, the conversion to exercise minutes was the most effective.

“In general, people are very bad at estimating the amount of calories in food they consume,” said study researcher Sara Bleich, an assistant professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. “If we give them easy ways of examining it…I think we can be effective in reducing calories in purchases.”

After introducing the signs to neighborhood stores near schools, researchers observed teenagers and monitored how their beverage-purchasing habits changed compared with the period before the signs went up.

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