Hot MedFax

OK.  So there are the calories we have to count.  The fat and sodium content.  The portion size.  And now a new study is telling us we have to pay attention to how the menu is worded because that affects our portion size. Can't we just eat a meal and enjoy it anymore?! Newswise.com reports that a new study out of Cornell University says that the way restaurants describe a menu item makes us eat more, or less. Consumers "use such labels to dictate how much food they think is a 'normal' portion, and then adjust their intake accordingly," according to the story. "People are willing to pay more for a portion that sounds larger, but they also are apt to eat more of an enormous portion if they believe it is ‘regular’ to do so,” newswise.com quotes David R. Just, associate professor at Cornell’s Dyson School of Applied Economics. Just conducted the study with Brian Wansink, professor of marketing at Cornell. Both authors are affiliated with the Cornell Food...

OK.  So you're determined to eat healthier. Why not have some chcken?  A broiled chicken leg, thigh, and a breast -- that should do it. Not.  People are eating healthier, it's true.  But they're eating more.  According to reuters.com, people are eating large portions of healthy food, thinking it doesn't matter. But calories are calories.  "People think (healthier food) is lower in calories," Pierre Chandon, a marketing professor at the INSEAD Social Science Research Center in France, told Reuters' Kerry Grens, and they "tend to consume more of it." Portion sizes have become larger over the years, as have plate sizes.  I purposely went out and bought smaller plates so less food looks like more (and you actually eat less).  Now when I go to a restaurant and see the heaping amounts of food on the (huge) plate, I sometimes want to send it back, but more often, just take half home.  In an interesting study, Grens reports, participants w...