Recently I got the chance to read The Dieter’s Paradox: Why Dieting Makes Us Fat
Why Dieting Makes Us Fat: The Comparison Fallacy
By Alexander Chernev
Author of The Dieter’s Paradox: Why Dieting Makes Us Fat
What makes for a good choice? Most often, good choices are those that bring us closer to our goals. When we are lucky enough to have a set of options containing one that will clearly move us closer to our goal, making a “good” choice is easy. But what if we face a decision in which all options are “bad,” yet some are worse than others? Would selecting the best option, even though it is still “bad,” be a good decision?
The answer is yes, but only when we are forced to choose. When the choice itself is optional, choosing a bad alternative — even if it’s the best available — is often still a poor decision. And yet we often consider the relative advantage of the available options as the benchmark for making a “good” choice. By doing so, we ignore the fact that even the best available option might contradict our goals. And we end up choosing an option that, although better than the others, is still “bad” when measured against what we’re trying to achieve. We forget that we have a “no choice” option.
One of the bestselling diet books, Eat This Not That! The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution, advocates what appears to be a very simple yet effective approach to weight loss. In a nutshell, it calls for substituting a rather unhealthy meal with a similar but healthier version. To help achieve that, the book offers side-by-side comparisons of relatively unhealthy and relatively healthy meals from many popular restaurants and fast food establishments.
At first glance, it sounds like a great idea. It’s easy to remember and implement. More important, substituting a healthy option for an unhealthier one seems like a bulletproof solution to weight loss. The problem is that the “eat-this-not-that” rule can have an unexpected side effect: We end up thinking that as long as we consciously choose a healthier option over a more indulgent one, we are making a “virtuous” choice. In doing so, we lose sight of the fact that the presence of a worse option does not really make the chosen option better. In fact, quite often the chosen option is not healthy at all. Let’s consider the following examples of “eat thing, not that” food.
This simple approach to dieting is appealing: we can have our cake and eat it too! Or at least so it seems until we see the calorie and nutritional content of the supposedly “good” options.
The Celeste pizza with its 350 calories and 17g fat is definitely not a healthy option, but this does not necessarily make the suggested Lean Cuisine pizza, with its 340 calories and 10g fat, a good choice. Similarly, a Late July chocolate cookie scores 150 calories, 9g sugars, and 6g fat — only slightly better than the Pillsbury macadamia nut cookie with its 180 calories, 13g sugars, and 10g fat. The purportedly “healthy” option Cracker Jack actually contains more sugars (15g) than the option it is supposed to replace — the Crunch ‘n Munch popcorn (11g sugars). And even though the “better choice” of a pair of Reese’s peanut butter cups has fewer calories than the Twix peanut butter bar, it is certainly no slouch in the fat department, weighing in at 13g. (It is also rich in saturated fats — containing about 40% of the recommended daily intake — in addition to having more sugars than Twix).
What becomes instantly clear is that the “good” options are good only in a side-by-side comparison with less healthy options. If considered in isolation, many of the so-called “good” choices are quite “bad.”
Don’t take this the wrong way — this side-by-side comparison isn’t totally without merit. Indeed, if we have to choose between Twix and Reese’s, the latter is likely to be the better option (even despite its slightly higher sugar content). What we often forget in the process is that this is a discretionary choice — we are not forced to choose between the available options. We also can decide to eat something very different, eat only a portion of the food we choose, or — in a rare fit of willpower — skip snacking altogether (or at least until the next tempting set of options comes along).
This line of reasoning implies that replacing Twix with Reese’s might not be a good solution at all. Consuming half of the Twix package (which, by the way, contains two bars) might be a better option. Skipping it altogether (remember, this is a discretionary choice) might prove an even better solution. It seems that in addition to a book on how to “eat this not that” we also need a book on how to “skip this and eat half of that.”
© 2011 Alexander Chernev, author of The Dieter’s Paradox: Why Dieting Makes Us Fat
Author Bio
Alexander Chernev, author of The Dieter’s Paradox: Why Dieting Makes Us Fat, is a psychologist who is studying how people make choices. He holds two doctoral degrees: a Ph.D. in Psychology from Sofia University and a second Ph.D. in Business Administration from Duke University. He is a marketing professor at Northwestern University, where he teaches behavioral decision theory, marketing management and strategy, and consumer research.
Dr. Chernev has won numerous awards for his teaching and research, including the Early Career Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association for his contribution to consumer psychology. His research has been published in leading psychology journals, and a recent survey ranked him as the most prolific scholar in the top marketing journals in the past 20 years. He has been widely quoted in the business and popular press, including Scientific American, Business Week, Forbes, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Harper’s Magazine.
He is not on a diet but often adds a healthy option to his meals.
For more information please visit http://www.dietersparadox.com/, and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.