Bad maths skills ‘fuelling obesity’

THREE quarters of adults cannot work out how much sugar they should be eating because their maths skills are so poor, a survey suggests.

This struggle to understand the information on food labels could help to explain why one in four adults in the UK is obese.

Our numeracy skills are also lagging behind many other developed countries. According to a recent study, the UK is ranked 26th – behind Vietnam, Poland and Estonia.

The survey, by the charity National Numeracy, involved showing around 2,000 adults a chocolate bar label. The information displayed the amount of sugar the bar contained both in grams and as a percentage of an adult’s total daily allowance.

The volunteers were then asked to choose an adult’s total daily allowance out of six options.

Just over one in four gave the right answer to the GCSE-level question, while half got it wrong – with the rest not even bothering to guess, saying they did not know the answer.

Men did better than women – 36 per cent of men answered correctly, compared to just 18 per cent of women.