I’ve warned against “diet” anything already. Diet soda. “Diet” snack packs. Even fake sweetener. Why? The underlying reason is that when you see the word “diet” (as well as other health “indicators” such as organic, natural or low-fat) your brain says “go ahead, eat a little more! It’s diet after all.” Recent research has highlighted some information that could just confirm my dissuasion against diet foods.
The number of calories per gram of food has actually gone down by 12% since 1970. So yes, this major low-fat, diet, no-sugar-added industry has done its job to a certain extent. However, people are eating 29% more than they were chowing down on in 1970. So that outweighs the benefits of our calorie-slim foods.
It makes sense. Our culture has become so food-obsesssed in the past few decades, with fad diets arising almost weekly and what seems like endless books on diet-cooking being published, that food is probably more on our minds than ever. And for some, that just has the opposite of the intended effect.
Forget labels like low-fat, non-fat and even zero-calories. Listen to your body. Am I hungry? No? Well then even though those low-fat cookies wouldn’t be that bad for you, what’s best is just passing on them altogether.