You are What You Think You Eat

Do you force yourself to eat healthy meals? Be careful. A new study has found that focusing on the health virtues of your food might backfire later on, causing you to feel hungrier and perhaps making you more likely to reach for the wrong kinds of food to make up the perceived difference.

Forgoing pizza for a salad at lunchtime can make you feel as if you’ve made a big stride toward the day’s healthy eating goals, but if you feel hungry again soon afterward and choose a high-fat, high-calorie snack to fill you up, any progress is quickly negated.

In the study, one group of people ate food labeled as “healthy,” while another group ate the same food described as “tasty.” Those in the “healthy” group reported being hungrier afterward than the ones who had no concept of the food’s health value.

The study also showed that people who were given a choice and picked a food described as healthy over one described as tasty reported no difference in their hunger levels later on, indicating that the key may lie in a person’s level of commitment to eating right. When you feel required to eat healthy foods, your body is tricked into feeling hungrier than it actually is. In other words, obligatory healthy eating makes you more likely to rebound with unhealthy foods than eating healthfully because you want to.

Encouraging good nutrition is important as ever, but should take into account the potential for the “health” message to backfire.

Here are some smart healthy-eating tips to share with your employees: