"Healthy" Food Options Lead to Unhealthy Food Choices

I mentioned several theories of obesity from low carb and Paleo gurus in a previous post. Today, I want to show some psychological reasons why people make poor food choices, potentially ending up obese. The theory of eating cues is not meant to replace any other theories about obesity, merely to supplement them. External triggers are very real.

Two important studies in the Journal of Consumer Research show why “healthy” choices in a restaurant may lead to unhealthy meal selection. Words like “healthy” are in quotations marks, as the dominant paradigm of these studies is that low fat, high carb is good and high fat is bad. We Paleo and low carb types know better. Still, they make for very interesting reading and offer yet another reason why obesity may be increasing.

In the first study, consumers who went to Subway believed they were eating healthy food. This led to choosing a “healthy” sandwich, but several “unhealthy” sides, such as sugary drinks and cookies.  When asked to estimate the number of calories they consumed, they estimated, on average, 35% fewer calories than they actually consumed. They did not make this magnitude of error estimating calories when eating at McDonald’s. Subway is permeated by a “health halo” that implies all of the menu items at Subway are healthy. In reality, some sandwiches have more calories than a Big Mac. At McDonald’s, people are not under the illusion that they are eating healthy foods, so they may actually consume fewer calories than at Subway.

A second study explains why this is happening. Consumers have a goal of eating healthier, and “healthy” items on the menu confirm their goal of healthy eating. The mere presence of a “healthy” menu choice does three things.  First, it vicariously fulfills a desire or goal the make more “healthy” eating choices. Second, it focuses the consumer’s attention on the least healthy item in the choice set. And finally, it provides consumers with a license to indulge. Their goal of eating at a “healthy” restaurant is met, so they don’t actually have to eat in a “healthy” manner, just eat at a “healthy” restaurant. This is what focuses their attention on the unhealthy menu options and leads them to indulge, and this study demonstrates convincingly that this is even true with individuals who have a high degree of self-control. The authors of this paper demonstrated this effect in four different studies across different contexts. It also works in vending machines with more “healthy” options (sales of Snickers bars go up).

What does this all mean? In the rush to add “healthier” items to the menus at unhealthy restaurants, the net effect is an increase in sales of unhealthy items. When “healthy” items are not present, consumers make “wiser” decisions about their “healthy” food choices.

So as I have shown before (here and here), cues, such as "healthy" food options, plate size, container size, 100-calorie packages, etc., have a direct and unrecognized impact on how people eat what they eat. So it is not all food palatability, carbs, toxins, NADs, modern lifestyle, genetics, or infections that lead to obesity. Sometimes, it is also pure psychology.


There are a lot of other food cues to report on, but all in due time. Keep watching this space!

Large Containers, Large Plates

Yesterday, I wrote about research on chronic dieters and small package size. Today, I want to report on some research about large container size and its impact on eating.

Apparently, chronic dieters and their small packages aside, the larger the container, the more people will consume. This article reports on container size and palatability, and is one of Brian Wansink's infamous popcorn studies. Popcorn was given away during an early afternoon movie screening (just after lunch, so consumers would not be hungry) in either medium or large buckets. The popcorn was either freshly popped or stale (14 days old). But whether or not the popcorn was palatable was not the issue; consumers ate 45% more fresh popcorn from the big buckets and 33.6% more stale popcorn from the big buckets than from the medium buckets. The conclusion: container size is a powerful cue to how much you eat. There is another version of this popcorn study. In this second study, people who reported they disliked the stale popcorn still ate 61% more popcorn from a large rather than the medium container. Those who reported they liked the fresh popcorn ate 49% more popcorn from the large rather than the medium container. The conclusion: container size is a powerful cue for consumption. The bigger the container, the more will be consumed, whether the food is palatable or not.

Another, similar study was conducted to demonstrate the effects of plate size on portions. This video (select the menu button on the player and scroll to the last segment) explains the study. Basically, participants scoop pasta on to a small plate. Before they can take the plate to the table, they are distracted. During the distraction, the plate and food are surreptitiously weighed. The server then "accidentally" coughs or sneezes on the plate and offers the participant a second plate and has them scoop up more pasta. The catch: the second plate is much larger. Once again, the plate is surreptitiously weighed before the plate is taken away. The results: the same person scoops up 25% more pasta on to the larger plate rather than the smaller plate. The takeaway from the study: we are cued into how much to eat by plate size.

Are people in the low carb/paleo communities susceptible to these cues? You betcha.  But as Brian Wansink, the author of the above studies, wrote in his book Mindless Eating, you can use these cues to your advantage. Serve your meals on smaller plates and "mindlessly" consume less. As I have mentioned previously, I have stalled on my low carb journey and need to cut calories. An easy way to do this is by using smaller containers and plates.

100-Calorie Food Packages and Low Carb

As my cousin Cathy once said, "When I think of all the reasons I eat, hunger has very little to do with it." How true. There is more psychology involved in eating than one may think, and there is a lot of interesting food research out there to report on. Not all of it is low carb or Paleo, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Since I am a marketing professor, I have decided to report on some of the interesting food research that I stumble across in the academic marketing literature. I will link to abstracts and full text articles whenever possible, though if you don't have academic access, you may not be able to pull up the full article. But fear not: I will summarize them in plain English and avoid the statistics and academic-speak.

Today's topic: diet "food" in 100-calorie packages. According to this article published in the Journal of Consumer Research, chronic dieters perceive that if a food, such as M&Ms, comes in a 100-calorie pack, it is a diet food. This perception can prompt chronic dieters to overeat the "diet food" contained in the 100-calorie pack. The authors caution dieters to be wary of "foods" contained in 100-calorie packs.

In a second study about small packages of food, this article, also in the same issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, shows that large packages trigger concerns of overeating in chronic dieters, but small packages do not trigger the same concerns. In fact, small packages actually encourage chronic dieters to eat more.

In this clever study, one group of participants had their dietary concerns "activated" by taking surveys about dieting and thinness and by being weighed and measured in front of mirrors. They were then asked to evaluate commercials during an episode of Friends. Another group was given the same task, but did not take the dieting surveys and were not weighed and measured prior to watching Friends. The research participants thought they would be evaluating TV advertisements, but that was really a distraction from the true purpose of the study. The researchers actually monitored how many potato chips participants consumed during the TV show.

The catch: the chips came in large bags and small bags. The group whose dietary concerns were activated by the survey and the weigh in did not consumer very many chips from the large bags, but ate a lot of chips from the small bags. The control group ate roughly the same amount of chips from large or small bags.

The takeaway: dieters actually consume more high-calorie snacks when they are in small packages rather than large packages.

So, combining the results from the two studies, dieters perceive food in 100-calorie packages to be diet food, and they will eat more of them, even if they are, in reality, high calorie snacks.

Do we in the low carb/Paleo communities fall prey to this, too? I know I have, in the past. For example, these 10 gram, 70% dark chocolate mignonettes each have three grams of carbs, one gram of fiber (for two net grams of carbs), 3 grams of saturated fat in the healthy cocoa butter, and 59 calories. Isn't that a perfect, low carb food? Yes--if you eat one piece. But if you perceive it to be "diet" food and overeat it, then no, it is not good for you and is in reality a high-calorie snack.