Word: self-control
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...turns out that making healthy food choices is not exactly as straightforward as it sounds. In fact, when restaurants include low-fat, low-calorie choices on the menu, they may be making us more likely to choose wrong. What's more, it's people who rank high in self-control who tend to make the worst eating choices of all. (See what makes us want to eat more food...
Before the investigators served up a morsel, they had their volunteers complete a standard behavioral questionnaire designed to measure self-control. "The survey covers a whole spectrum of human behaviors, including such things as shopping and drinking," says Keith Wilcox, a Ph.D. candidate at the City University of New York and one of the study's authors. "We tailored it so it would also be food-specific...
...only three items: chicken nuggets, french fries and a baked potato. To eliminate the confounding variable of money, the researchers told the volunteers that all items cost the same. People generally agreed that the fries seemed like the least healthy choice, and no surprise, those who scored highest in self-control were the least likely to choose the food. After that group left, another one was brought in and offered the same three choices, but this time a salad was added to the mix. In this case you'd expect the self-controlled folks to stampede for the greens...
...sandwich and a fish sandwich, with a veggie burger thrown in later as a ringer; for the other it was fudge-covered Oreos, plus two other types of Oreos, with a 100-cal. Oreo packet later added to the menu. In each case, the folks who rated high in self-control did a good job of making the healthiest choices they could - until a truly healthy option was presented, which is when they fell completely off the wagon...
There may be a physiological as well as a psychological process at work here. A leading theory is that exercising self-control is so hard on your brain that, like physical exercise, it depletes glucose levels, making you feel weaker. It's possible that imagining someone who has to exert self-control, and feeling their misery, tricks your brain into believing that your own glucose levels have declined. As the study says, this trick would, "in effect, set one's internal fuel gauge to 'low' [even if] there is still plenty of fuel left in the tank...