Be careful not to fall into this trap if you are looking to lose weight

Appearances can be deceptive!  New research done in America shows that people who go to so called healthy restaurants instead of a fast food restaurant maybe gorging themselves with more calories in the former rather than the latter. Cornell University of New York that did the research reported that those individuals who made a point of going to restaurants which promoted themselves as healthy often ordered more high calorie drinks, puddings and side dishes. 

I think it is fair to say that we have all been in this situation before. You now how it is; when somebody tells you that a particular foodstuff is extra low in calories or fat and thus you feel that you are justified in eating more of it than you would normally if you thought it was a standard calorie type of food. So what is happening is that these individuals who go to healthy restaurants feel that because all the food presented to them is healthy they are justified in eating more which actually means that their overall calorie count is more than it would have been if they had gone to a fast food restaurant.

The other thing that people do not realise is that healthy restaurants may only be slightly more calorie conscious than fast food restaurants. The researchers found that people who went to these healthy restaurants underestimated on average by about 35% how many calories were present in foodstuffs at these restaurants.

One example is the sandwich chain Subway which does have some healthy food choices in it. The researchers found that when people went to Subway they tended to include additional things to their standard meal which contained up to 131% more calories compared to when they visit a restaurant like Burger King or McDonald’s.

From other research that we have seen at Ukmedix News we know that people also tend to do the same when it comes to low calorie snacks. Somebody who might just have one small snack a day can be tempted to eat two or three because the advertising on the packaging says that it is low calorie.

Be careful not to fall into this trap if you are looking to lose weight. Portion control is one of the most effective methods of losing weight and you should not eat more of something just because it is supposedly low calorie.