John Tierney, “Health Halo Can Hide the Calories,” The New York Times, December 2, 2008

This article addresses one possible explanation for a phenomenon that New York Times journalist John Tierney refers to as “the American obesity paradox,” which he describes as the failure of America’s health food obsession to curb obesity rates. Tierney and Pierre Chandon, an assistant marketing professor with the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires (INSEAD), asked separate groups of New York City residents and tourists to estimate the calories of two nearly identical meals from Applebee’s. The first meal contained a salad and a soft drink; the second meal was identical, but added a 100-calorie package of crackers labeled “Trans Fat Free.” The U.S. residents overestimated
the calories in the first meal, but underestimated them in the second one. “Just as Dr. Chandon predicted, the trans-fat-free label on the crackers seemed to imbue them with a health halo that magically subtracted calories from the rest of the meal,” writes Tierney, who also found that foreign-born tourists “correctly estimated that the meal with the crackers had more calories than the meal without crackers.”

Tierney points to recent research claiming that “putting a ‘low fat’ label on food caused everyone, especially overweight people, to underestimate its calories, to eat bigger helpings and indulge in other foods.” In addition, the article questions whether the city’s recent ban on trans fat might backfire if “people start eating French fries – hey, they’re trans fat free now! – and rewarding themselves with dessert.” Chandon has further recommended that menus and packages clearly display calorie information to help consumers eliminate the health halo
effect. “The health halo raises some interesting problems for consumers, as well as for companies and public health officials like those in New York City, who last year banned trans fats from restaurants,” Tierney notes on his Times-sponsored blog. “It may seem helpful to point out supposedly virtuous food with labels like ‘trans fat-free’ or ‘low fat’ or organic, but do these labels just lead to more obesity?” See Tierney Lab: Putting Ideas in Science to the Test, December 2, 2008.