Do You Order Side Dishes At Restaurants? Watch Out For The Fat Intake
October 19, 2007
You may think dining at healthy restaurant over a fast food joint is a safe way to manage your weight loss program? Well, maybe not always.
US researchers have found that eating in restaurants that bill themselves as healthy can make you fatter.A series of new studies from New York’s Cornell University found that people who spurned fast food in favor of restaurants which advertised their food as healthy often treated themselves to higher calorie side dishes, drinks or desserts.
The research published in the October online version of the Journal of Consumer Research found people tended to underestimate by 35% how many calories were contained in so called healthy restaurant foods.
Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab said, “We found that when people go to restaurants claiming to be healthy such as-sandwich chain, Subway, they choose additional side items containing up to 131% more additional calories than when they go to restaurants like Mc Donald’s.”
Wansink and co-author Pierre Chandon, a marketing professor at the international business school INSEAD in France said, “Simply asking people to reconsider restaurants health claims prompted them to better estimate calories and cut down on side dishes.”In estimating a 1,000 calorie meal, I have found that people on an average underestimate by 159 calories if the meal was bought by Subway than at Mc Donald’s.”
Source: Reuters, New York
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