Shop till you slim

There are two important but time-consuming chores of modern life - the trip to the supermarket and a workout at the gym.

Soon consumers will be able to cut down on wasted "treadmill time" by getting physical during a shopping run.

A supermarket is introducing a revolutionary work-out trolley that puts a new meaning into the phrase "shop till you drop". The trolley can be programmed to make it harder to push, raising the heartbeat and exercising muscles in the legs, arms and stomach.

The aim of the trolley is to allow shoppers to monitor their heartbeat and count calories while pounding up and down the aisles.

Wayne Asher, who designed the trolley on behalf of German manufacturers Wanzl, said he hoped the machine would help raise health awareness among shoppers. He said: "If you are pushing it, are you going to put a chocolate cake in your trolley? You will be thinking, 'My God, I'm really unfit, my heart rate has gone up to 130, I must have something healthy'. Very few of us are ever aware of our heartbeat unless we go to the gym, but shopping is something we all do." The "trim trolley" - the prototype is launched today at Tesco's Kensington store - uses technology from different pieces of standard gym equipment cobbled together. The heartbeat and calorie counter are taken from gym equipment, the resistance wheel was stripped from a mountain bike and the mechanism is taken from a bicycle machine.

The trolley handle doubles up as a heartbeat monitor, showing the level of heartbeat, how many calories have been burned up and the time and distance covered.

In an Evening Standard test, a standard half-mile shopping trip burned off about 280 calories. A Tesco spokesman said: "We will gauge public reaction and if it's favourable we would have three to five Trim Trolleys in a store."