Healthy foods have a serious image problem. There are lots of foods that we know are good
for us, but it is hard to get people to eat them. Putting labels on foods like “low fat” or
“good for you” immediately makes people want to run the other way.
And now, there is even evidence that if you force people to
eat healthy food it may backfire.
Stacey Finkelstein and Ayelet Fishbach explored how eating
healthy foods affects other eating behavior in a paper in the October, 2010
issue of the Journal of Consumer Research. They were interested in whether requiring
people to eat healthy foods might actually make them hungrier and thus
interested in eating more food.
The key aspect of this work was the idea that someone might
be required to eat a healthy food. That
is, if someone chooses freely to eat a healthy food, then they are acting in a
way that is consistent with the goals of the way that they want to eat. But, if someone is required to eat a healthy
food, then their goal to eat is still active, and so they will remain hungry.
The authors tested this possibility in a few ways. In one simple study, they approached students
who were sitting in a public area at a university and offered them the
opportunity to do a taste test on a chocolate-raspberry protein bar. For some people, the bar was described as
healthy (having lots of protein, fiber, and no artificial sweeteners). For other people, the bar was described as
tasty (a chocolate bar with a tasty chocolate-raspberry core). After sampling the bar, people made a number
of ratings including a rating of how hungry they are. People who tasted the bar labeled as
“healthy” rated themselves as much hungrier than people who tasted the same bar
labeled as “tasty.”
Another study extended this experiment in two ways. First, it demonstrated that people who ate
something labeled as “healthy” actually ate more pretzels in a later part of
the experiment than people who ate something labeled as “tasty.” In addition, they demonstrated that this
effect was strongest for people who had a low concern for watching their
weight. That is, people who already had
the goal to eat healthy did not feel like they were forced to eat something
healthy. People who did not have the
goal to eat healthy, felt like this goal was imposed on them, and so they ate
more.
This study helps to make clear that eating food is more than
just consuming calories. At times,
people want to have a particular taste experience, or to indulge in a snack, or
to eat something rich. And, yes, some people
even have the goal to eat healthy foods or to feel good about themselves. But, those eating goals end up having a big
influence on eating behavior.
If the particular foods you eat satisfy the need of your
body to get calories, but they don’t satisfy the other goals that you have
related to eating, then the meal will not be satisfying. As a result, you may continue feeling hungry
and even eating, because you have not yet fulfilled your goals.
If you are going to change your eating habits, then, you
need to change your eating goals. You
cannot maintain goals like eating rich desserts and fatty foods if you want to
diet successfully. Even if you manage to
get yourself to eat some healthy foods, those goals will remain
unsatisfied. They will nag at you and
make you feel hungry until you do something about them.
