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Dieting is a give and take. Especially if you’re on a restrictive diet—sometimes, you’ll just take what you can get. But according to a recent study, even if you’re sticking as hard as possible to “healthy” foods, you could be undermining your diet by making the “healthier” choice.
The study contained around 500 people who were actively watching what they ate. Then, they were given two kinds of trail mix: some were marketed towards “fitness,” and some were just presented as normal trail mix. Then, they were given the opportunity to exercise as hard as they wanted.
Strangely enough, the participants who were considered the most weight-conscious ate much more of the “fitness” trail mix, and did not exercise as hard as they did when they ate the plain trail mix.
For those of us who consider ourselves health- and fitness-conscious, this may be a wake-up call. It’s easy to be fooled by a “nutrition” bar or a “whole grain” cereal, especially when they’re marketed towards those of us with active lifestyles. Then, suddenly, we’ve eaten twice as much as we planned, and feeling fine about it because who cares? It’s healthy. But it’s important to read the real label, which will reveal that these foods are still loaded with carbs and sugars.
The study hopes to encourage marketing materials on these “health” branded foods that exercise is still necessary.
But instead of waiting on food marketers to look out for our health, let’s try doing it ourselves. Read labels—the “Nutritional Facts” ones, not the fake ones.
Do you read nutrition labels? Have you ever been fooled by a "healthy" label?
Photo Copyright © 2013 Kesha Phillips/Flickr
