There's No Such Thing as "Free" . . .

(Photo credit: Roboppy/Flickr)**

Following the news that fundraising bake sales in California schools could soon be history due to well-meaning food legislation (read my post Save the Bake Sale!) comes this recent New York Times article proving that, once again, no good deed goes unpunished:

Health Halo Can Hide the Calories

(New York Times, 12/2/08)

"If you're a well-informed, health-conscious New Yorker who has put on some unwanted pounds in the past year, it might not be entirely your fault. Here's a possible alibi: The health halo made you do it . . . [Pierre Chandon] has been studying what researchers call the American obesity paradox. Why, as Americans have paid more and more attention to eating healthily, have we kept getting fatter and fatter?" (Read the full article here)

The Good . . . 

According to Dr. Chandon, a marketing professor at INSEAD in France, we've been fooled (or have fooled ourselves) into overeating because of a perception that certain foods and restaurants are 'healthy'. He and Dr. Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, have conducted numerous studies showing how food marketing "imbues [food] with a health halo that magically subtracted calories" through such practices as fast food restaurants trumpeting 'healthier' french fries because they're not cooked in trans-fat oils. Believing that we are eating well, we feel free to chow down, as Dr. Wansink notes in his book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think,

"The average Sub[way] diner thought he or she was eating 495 calories, but instead ate 677 - 34% more than he or she thought. [They] ate under the illusion that everything they touched was good for them . . . We want to say, 'Looks healthy to me,' so we can pile on the rest."

But it's not only advertisers and marketers who burnish this halo - our politicians also contribute to the effect when they pass well-intentioned legislation, such as banning the use of trans fats in New York city restaurants, that produce unanticipated results. 

. . . the Bad . . . 

The article calls it the 'health halo' but it is actually a perfect example of the "Peltzman Effect", named after Sam Peltzman, professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His 1975 study on the effects of seatbelt laws on driver behavior argued that mandating safety features with the intention of protecting people unintentionally spurs them to engage in more risky behavior precisely because the regulations make them feel safer.

Just as we search for the one magic diet that works for everyone, we want to point the finger at a single cause for obesity and other dietary-related chronic illnesses. However, by focusing on a single culprit for America's ever-expanding waistline - whether it's saturated fat, carbohydrates, high fructose corn syrup or trans fats - and attempting to control its consumption through legislation, we ignore other factors such as portion control and physical activity. Lulled into thinking that the problem is solved, we blissfully take it as a license to eat at will. 

. . . and the Ugly Truth.

What it's really doing is pinning the tail on all the animals in the barn except the donkey: too many calories. High consumption of substances such as trans and saturated fats have been shown to increase the risks of coronary heart disease but even foods that are free of these ingredients can lead to weight gain if we don't watch the amount we eat. To this end, not all legislation and marketing have been completely off the mark - NYC's requirement that restaurants post nutritional information have made diners there more conscious (read the article "Calories Do Count" at nytimes.com) and those '100-calorie' packs of favorite treats such as Oreos cookies can help with portion control. 

Being aware of our balance of energy consumption and expenditure - how many calories we consume through food and how much we burn through regular body functions and physical exercise - is the primary key to maintaining a healthy weight. To find out what your daily calorie requirement is, check out the Mayo Clinic's Calorie Calculator. 

Don't be seduced by the '[insert ingredient here]- free' labels splashed across food packages or the television ads that bestow a mantle of health on fast food restaurants. Remember, there's no such thing as a 'free' lunch.

**Updated 3/15/2012: In the original post published on 12/5/2008, I used a photograph which I credited to the source but did not actually have permission from the photographer to use. The new photo that replaces it above is used under a Creative Commons license.