TLN Health News Heads Up: By any other name, it's still a supersize

Fast-food portions keep getting bigger, but you might not know it

By Lisa R. Young, Ph.D, R.D.
(from MSNBC.com)

Fast-food restaurants may brag about their premium salads and apple fries, but for all the healthier items they've added to menus, portion bloat is bigger than ever.

Not only are servings getting larger, some top fast-food chains are engaged in a sleight-of-name game — marketing ploys which could confuse customers who think they're ordering less than they actually are, according to a study I co-authored with Dr. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, published in a recent Journal of Public Health Policy.

When McDonald's dumped its Supersize selections three years ago, many nutritionists were hopeful that restaurant chains and fast-food establishments would get back to thinking small.

Fat chance.

This article gets even better. Read on at MSNBC.com!

TLN Health News Heads Up: Healthy claims get diners to eat more

When people think they're saving calories, they splurge elsewhere
(from MSNBC.com)

People who opt for a meal at a ”healthy” restaurant often consume more calories than they would dining at fast food joints that make no health claims, a new study shows.

The researchers found that individuals underestimate the calorie content of foods served at restaurants they see as healthier, to a degree that could easily lead to weight gain.

For example, “People think that the same 1,000-calorie meal has 159 fewer calories if it comes from Subway than if it comes from McDonalds,” Dr. Pierre Chandon, at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, told Reuters Health. “If they choose to consume this fictitious ’calorie credit’ on other food, and it they eat at Subway twice a week, they could gain an extra 4.9 pounds a year.”

While restaurants presenting themselves as healthy have grown at a much faster rate over the past five years than traditional fast food restaurants, Americans’ waistlines have not been shrinking; in fact, the nation’s population is fatter than ever, note Chandon and his colleague Dr. Brian Wansink of Cornell University in Ithaca in their report in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Read this eye-opening article in its entirety at MSNBC.com!