If You Are Dieting…How To Counter The “Health Halo” Effect
One question that stumps U.S. public health officials is why—despite all the good health information and media attention—Americans are becoming more and more fat. It’s a question you might be asking yourself if you are trying to lose weight but having limited success, despite looking for “low fat” or “trans-fat free” food. Some nutritional researchers feel the problem, in part, could be due to the so-called “health halo” effect. Another name for this could be the “Nabisco SnackWell” effect.
Back in the 1990s, the Nabisco company made a tremendous marketing coup by introducing the SnackWell brand, the first really great-tasting fat-free cookie. The most popular flavor was the SnackWell Devil’s Food Cookie Cake. When they first came out, I tried to buy them many times, but since I usually worked late, by the time I got to the store, the SnackWells were gone. Dieters had already had emptied the shelves. Some people were almost camping at the store waiting for the SnackWell shipment to arrive. It was a crazy scene.
Fortunately (or not) about a year later I started noticing some SnackWells on the shelves, even late at night, because the mania had died down. By then, dieters realized that each little beautifully-formed chocolaty SnackWell (how could anything so small be bad?) represented 50 calories, and they added up. Some well-meaning dieters were gobbling them up by the boxful, like popcorn, because they were “fat-free”. The front of the box said nothing about calories, only that they were “fat-free”. Consumers were seduced by the label; SnackWells were protected by the “health halo”… they were fat-free, they must be healthy. Finally though people got smart and realized the little addicting devils were adding hundreds of calories to their diet each day, sales plummeted, and I was finally able to buy them.
Read this New York Times article for the full story, but basically a French nutritional researcher (the French know food much better than Americans) studied New Yorkers, and found that when they saw a “trans-fat free” label, they got reckless, and consistently under-estimated the calorie content, and ate too much of whatever it was. Interestingly, this calorie-amnesia effect was more pronounced in people who were already overweight. They just lost control.
Here is how you can guard against this happening to you:
Be cautious when you see “Non-Fat”, “Trans-Fat Free”, or even “Organic” on a label. If it doesn’t have fat, what does it have instead? “Organic” says nothing about calories. The main function of the label is to get you to buy, not to give competent nutritional information. Most important, look at the calorie count per serving. What is the serving size for the calories quoted, and how many servings are you eating?
Greg Said,
December 5, 2008 @ 7:58 am
Interesting article. I’ve lost about 15 lbs recently and found portion control was critical key to success.
Also interesting to see you using a shorter format – part of me liked the quicker read and part of me was left wanting more. I need to process to decide which part of me is right ;o)
Paulo Said,
December 7, 2008 @ 9:39 pm
Very good post. Loved it!
It gave me a very good topic to talk with friends.
I hope to hear more things about diet.
Good work.
Paulo
drDave Said,
December 8, 2008 @ 1:29 pm
Thanks for your feedback!
And I guess that’s a good sign Greg you were wanting more…in almost all posts I put links, so you can click on them for more. My book will have more details about different topics, but for the blog format, I want the posts to be reasonably concise.
Phyllis Said,
December 18, 2008 @ 9:25 am
And they are loaded with sugar! I find that staying away from simple carbs (like sugar), not fat makes me drop weight faster!
PS – I LOVE THIS BLOG!!!!!!
drDave Said,
December 18, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
Phyllis,
Thanks for your comments and support!
I agree about simple carbs, and high glycemic index foods….they seem to be the weight gain culprit for most people, more than fats. It’s great we are seeing more complex carbs sold now so it’s easier to replace the simple carbs (like whole wheat pasta rather than regular)….
Keep reading and commenting!
David
Greg B Said,
December 20, 2008 @ 7:30 am
In addition to the mentioned calorie issue, more important is the actual TRANS FAT content of these products. Although the nutritional panel, as well as the packaging, may state “ZERO TRANS FAT”, if one serving provides less than 500mg of trans fat, it can somehow be legally listed as zero. In other words, you may consume a serving or two, yet actually be ingesting as much as 499 to 998mg of trans fat. My hunch is that the serving size has been low-balled to accommodate this fact. I wish my checking account worked the same way. Greg B
drDave Said,
December 20, 2008 @ 12:08 pm
Thanks for your input Greg B. It’s true and somewhat disturbing that the law permits up to ½ gram of trans fat “per serving” and still the front of the label can claim “trans fat free”. So if you consume several servings, you could easily be consuming an unhealthy amount of trans fat. It’s hard to tell with the present labeling law, and hopefully this will be reversed in the next several years so that any trans fat content will show on the label. You are right Greg B that “serving sizes” are often very small and misleading.
Now apparently the government considers less than ½ gram a “trivial” amount (which it may be if you only have one serving). The American Heart Assn. recommends less than 2 total grams of trans fat per day, and you have to remember if you are eating “trans fat free” cookies or whatever, that you might well be also consuming some trans fat elsewhere in your daily diet.
For the time being, if you want to be more certain about really limiting your trans fats, again, look into the ingredient list, and if you see “partially hydrogenated (then name of some oil)” or “hydrogenated”, particularly high up in the list, you should avoid those products.
For a lot more information, here’s a good link from the American Heart Association called Fats 101 that gives lots of concise information on all the fats:
http://facethefats.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3045789