Healthy Fast Food - Good Choices Gone Bad
Filed under: Food and Nutrition, Diet and Weight Loss
Fast food restaurants have long been criticized for their fatty, salty menu options -- greasy burgers, salty fries and gigantic sodas. So they've started adding choices for the health conscious, like salads, baked potatoes and yogurt. But it seems when healthy choices are on the menu, people might actually let down their guards and go big -- choosing the least healthy option instead of the salad.
Three small studies turned up this conclusion, and it's an intriguing finding. Study author Keith Wilcox attributes it to the "licensing effect." You know how sometimes after a long run, you think to yourself, "Well, I can indulge at dinner tonight, I worked out." The same appears to happen in the brain when salad or other healthy choices show up on a fast food menu. "People give themselves license to eat more indulgently because there is a healthy option," Wilcox tells That's Fit.
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In one study, Wilcox gave participants -- college students -- two different menus. One had french fries, chicken nuggets and baked potatoes. The other had all three choices, plus a salad. Participants were three times more likely to choose fries when offered the menu with the salad than without.
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