Great post on Mindless Eating about how people tend to over-indulge when eating foods labeled “low-fat.” Sure, they have less fat, but do they have less calories?
The Reoccuring Curse of Low-Fat Labels
This happens all the time. Often the fat-free version is not much lower in calories than the regular version. For example, each low-fat Oreo cookie has 50 calories. The regular version has just over three calories more.
Low-fat labels can lead us to mindlessly overeat a product with guilt-free abandon.Take granola. Where low-fat granola is indeed lower in fat, it is only about 12 percent lower in calories. It does not take a lot of mindless munching to scarf down an extra 12 percent of granola, especially while thinking you are doing your body good.
Perfect conclusion:
So rather than overeating something you don’t even really like, enjoy the regular version — but only half as much of it.
I get the impression that that’s the key to European diets, where foods are often much very rich. They simply don’t serve them on oversize plates made to look full with four handfuls of freedom fries.
In two word: Portion control.
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