You Dieting! Diet Fast Food Reviews: Do You See "Healthy" & then Eat "Bad"
| Fast Food Reviews: Do You See "Healthy" & then Eat "Bad" |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by Richard L. Lipman M.D. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Friday, 24 April 2009 13:32 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
It's easy to go into a fast food restaurant with the intent of ordering the salad, wrap, or grilled chicken and when waiting in line change your mind and order the worst foods. The Fast Food Ordering List uses a supermarket type shopping list and helps you avoid making this mistake.  Fast Food Reviews:
How to Eat Fast Foods & Not Gain Weight Eating in Fast Food Drive-Thurs Even Worse Eating in Fast Food Restaurants: Focus on the Healthy Food
Eating in YourCar Children Eating Fast Food: Sure to Be Fat Adult Hiding Food & Eating in Secret Eating In or Out? When many people struggling to lose weight see those brightly colored food menus on the wall of McDonald's, Burger King or even Starbucks offering a few low calorie foods among all of the bad ones they seem to make the wrong choice. In fact, they will pick the "least healthy food" on the menu, reports Gavan Fitzsimons, professor of marketing at Duke's Fuqua School of Business. They are looking at enticing, colored pictures which seem to call their name and only have a few seconds to make a choice. He calls this effect "vicarious goal fulfillment." Published on- line in the April 2009 posting of the Journal of Consumer Research Fitzsimons goes on to say, "the presence of a salad on the menu has a liberating effect on people who value healthy choices." The mere presence of a healthy food option fills nutrition related goals and appears to give many people a excuse to indulge. Working with co-workers Keith Wilcox, Lauren Block and Beth Vallen they tested several menus.The consistent finding was that "adding the healthy option, even in people who exhibited good self control, almost always led to the individual making the worst choice. "What this shows is that adding one or two healthy items to a menu is essentially the worst think you can do" says Fitzsimons. It might be better to have only "bad" and "very bad" choices on the menu, then the dieter might at least search for the lower calorie alternative.
The authors conclude that just seeing the healthy choice, the salad in this case, listed as an option, after briefly considering it, they were unable to give into their temptation for what the really wanted-the burgers and fries. Would this have happened as easily if they were sitting down reading from a menu without colored pictures?
If you have done this before, I suggest you need to decide what you are going to order before walking into these restaurants. Keep a small pad of paper and a pen in the glove box write down your order.just like you might do with a supermarket shopping list. Call it the Fast Food Ordering List -- and then don't change your mind.
Using this menu, you will find multiple combinations that are less than 500-600 calories.
The healther salad might be the better choice, but the plain hamburger, side salad and parfait at 550 calories is not so bad considering the alternatives. For more alternatives see Ask Dr Lipman About Fast foods.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Updated on Thursday, 18 June 2009 21:16 |
e-mail Dr. Lipman
Event Calendar
