If a salad is a salad? Why dieters labels easily confused are (time.com)

Dieter's is a focused range: calculate calories, sugar and fat content and conscientious questions for salad dressing on the side. Right? Not exactly. According to a new study tend to be dieters actually make judgments about which to eat based only on the label, align instead of ingredients.

"In the course of time dieters learn to focus on simply avoiding foods that they recognize as banned based on product name" Caglar Irmak, Assistant Professor of marketing at the University of South Carolina, said the authors, Beth Vallen, Assistant Professor of marketing at the Loyola University Maryland. and Stefanie rose Robinson, a student at University of South Carolina, in a statement (PDF). "So dieters should assume that an item is a junk name (such as pasta) less healthy as an element associated with a healthy name (such as salad), and they spend time more product information, that their trials can have, not."

In view of the widespread health products washed currently on store shelves - potato chips as "Veggie chips," milk shakes sold as "Smoothies", sugary drinks newly positioned as "flavored water", which could lead to much confusion, so the authors.

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In a series of experiments, participants - the researchers asked some, some, were the diet, the not - to the relative to evaluate good food, and these ratings against how much people uses measured. In an experiment people were healthy imagine ordering from a lunch menu and how either the "daily special salad" or the "daily special pasta" was asked. They were given ingredient lists and photos of the starters, who exactly the same - both contained Romaine lettuce, diced tomatoes, onions, peppers, pasta shells, salami, mozzarella and a savory herb vinaigrette. Both amounted to 900 calories, with 60 grams of fat. The only difference was that a salad, and the other, pasta has been called.

The label alone was not the Nondieters' enough to the Diätetiker-but - affect ratings. If the product was called pasta, the dieters rated it as much less healthy than Nondieters. Interestingly, when it was called the "healthy", salad, however led to any difference in opinion between the two groups. (But overall dieters believed the same dish, called salad, was healthier.)

This is because dieters tend to be more sensitive not just, and more motivated taboo foods such as pasta, ice cream, potato chips and candy - as people who are at all times their weight to certain names, to avoid them. On the other hand their judgment is healthy-sounding foods however, otherwise as Nondieters'. The typical Dieter strategy not to necessarily more good food to eat, but to avoid bad.

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Are why deceive not easily Nondieters product labels? The authors write:

it is important to note here that we do not believe that reviews immune are the Nondieters the food name against the impact is that these people are usually food evaluate more systematically as dieters. In fact, we argue that the reason which has product name is no effect on Nondieters evaluations, that it neither the implicit associations between certain categories of foods evaluate the motivation, spontaneously to food and to do that dieters

in other words, People who are busy with weight loss not just less interested about these things.

In another experiment, dieters and Nondieters were asked, the to and flavour of sour Jelly Belly jelly beans - presented as "Fruit Chews" or "Chews candy." Not only were dieters of likely to rate that chew the candy as healthy and less tasty than Nondieters, but also, ironically, less they ate more of the snack if it was known as fruit chews.

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Seems as if dieters are so busy avoiding a long list of "forbidden" foods which don't do they note what are really important: the product ingredients, not the marketing hype.

The study was published in Journal of consumer research.

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