There’s no accounting for tastes. That is why, while others who visit Dubai do the rounds of gold souqs and branded apparel and accessory stores and investigate myriad shopping options, I have no interest in them. All I do is make a detailed study of the foodstuff available in the different supermarket chains.

Of course, I add my footfall to that of discerning shoppers and follow their trail in the malls, but there’s no way I would actually enter a clothing store or a shoe palace ... Those are passed quickly, given a wide berth (probably because I wouldn’t find much there for my wide girth), until finally my nose leads me to the supermarket at the top of the mall or in the basement. There, quite convinced that I had done my share of walking for the day, I allow myself the treat of inspecting every shelf and every price tag. I practice my mental arithmetic and rapidly multiply in my head so that I know exactly how much each thing costs in terms of the Indian rupee — and only then do I proceed to buy.

Everyone knows there are all kinds of bargains on supermarket shelves and if you check them out often enough, you are sure to come upon offers you cannot ignore. Thus, on each visit to Dubai, I pop into the friendly neighbourhood supermarket or the supermarkets in a mall, or the stand-alone supermarket where one can get totally lost and I scour the aisles until I come upon those ‘special offers’ and ‘deal-of-the-day’ and ‘off-until-stocks-last’ discounts.

Thus, I return laden with chocolates, chocolate sauces, chocolate-coated dates, chocolate-chip cookies, ready-in-a-jiffy chocolate cake mixes ... and I firmly believe that I’ve been an out and out winner each time!

Unfortunately, while I do all that mental math to arrive at just how little or how much these bargains cost in terms of my home currency and how many kilograms I can afford to buy and carry home without paying for extra baggage, I neglect to also tote up the calories I am bringing back. I convince myself that I am gaining monetarily at every turn and I don’t turn around often enough in front of the mirror to notice the weight gain that comes along with those delicious chocolate-coated goodies!

The Australian initiative I now read about, which seeks to label each item — like one chocolate bar or one chocolate smoothie or one chocolate biscuit-to-die-for — with the length of time needed to walk off the calories contained in it could be just what is needed to make me connect-the-dots and think twice before I go berserk in the supermarket.

Let’s be clear: I love to walk. (I spend all day walking along those supermarket aisles, remember?) And back home, our neighbourhood has quiet, tree-lined streets with plenty of slopes and miniature parks to rest and stretch and catch up with friends and is a veritable walker’s paradise. So three hours a day in such surroundings does not hold any terror for me. But if I need three hours to walk off just a couple of those biscuits — well, I may have to think again.

Just how many hours would I have to pound the streets to compensate for the calories contained in that full pack of cookies I scarfed late last night? And then what about all those other chocolate loaded goodies I had stuffed into my suitcase — and my backpack?

Wait a minute, my mental arithmetic skills do not extend that far — multiplying and multiplying again, dividing, compounding. It’s getting a bit too complicated for me and according to my calculations, I need to walk to Dubai and back — across the Hindu Kush mountains — to burn off the contents of that last suitcase I brought home ...

Cheryl Rao is a freelance journalist based in India.