As we learned in the documentary, The Men Who Made Us Fat, the halo effect is very dangerous. In the halo effect, people usually eat more when they are eating foods marketed as “healthy.” In the documentary it was revealed that people eat twice as much when they’re eating a 100 calorie pack or a similar prepackaged food marketed as a “healthier” alternative. This is because people think that since these foods are low in calories, they must also be low in sugar and fat, which is not the case.

I found a New York Times article, “How Salad Can Make Us Fat,” describing the licensing effect as well as mentioning the halo effect on food consumption. The licensing effect described in the article is when people consume more as a reward. For example, people having an extra beer if they exercised that day, or an extra piece of cake if they had just consumed a salad. This idea of people pairing healthy foods with unhealthy reward foods is what is making us fat.

The article describes a study conducted on weight conscious people, revealing the halo effect in action. The group of people were asked to guess the amount of calories in a meal, a bacon cheeseburger. The average number the group guessed was around 700 calories. When they were shown the same burger, with a side of celery sticks, their guesses were significantly lower, around 600. This is evidence as to why people falsely believe they are eating healthier when they are simply just pairing an “unhealthy” food with something “healthy.”

This article brought up another really interesting point involving unhealthy non food related halo effects. When smokers were given a placebo vitamin C pill, they smoked twice as much because once again, they were pairing their unhealthy activity with something “healthy;” thus creating this mindset of the need for “balance.”

In a New York Times article, the question of whether eating dirt is harmful is addressed, which can be found here. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, we eat about a “spoonful” of dirt before we die. We eat a little bit of dirt everyday, through uncleaned vegetables, dirty hands and many other ways. Sometimes, children eat dirt without knowing any better, yet they have not shown any negative health effects and grow out of their habit.

I found this article interesting because, in Psychology class the eating disorder pica has been mentioned a few times. Eating non-food items is seen as abnormal and strange in our society. Eating large amounts of non-food items can lead to health complications such as intestinal blockage. When we step back and look at the larger picture, we eat about a “spoonful” of dirt throughout our lifetime, yet we do not see this as an abnormal eating disorder because the amount consumed is minimal.

The important thing we should realize is that everything that we eat has to be eaten in moderation. In today’s society, we categorize food as healthy and un-healthy. Paul Rozin, a psychologist, developed a fallacy for the food ways of America. Americans believe that there is a black, unhealthy, and white, healthy, idea on food. In reality, most foods are in a gray zone. Americans assume food is either good or bad, not focusing on perfect portions. Eating dirt is just one example that everything we eat has to be consumed in conservative portions to prevent any ill effects. All foods are considered nutritious, whether it is a piece moist chocolate cake or a bowl of fresh garden salad. Everything we consume has to be eaten in reasonable portions to prevent any harmful health issues. This example of moderately eating dirt helps to clarify that all food is acceptable to eat but, portion control needs to be monitored.

As soccer season has come to a close, it is inevitable that I want to spend my freedom someplace other than the gym. I want to spend hours that I never had in the dining hall and in my dorm room occupied with candy, chips, and a (somewhat) nice bed that lays right in front of a nice television. But as I was binge watching my shows, Dr. Nolan popped into my head with his brilliant lectures over the topics of obesity and weight loss. I know I am already fighting a historically poor gene pool when it comes to health, so it would be delusional to think that I could sit on the couch and watch television with some chips and salsa and not be the victim of the (mythical, but very possible) ‘freshman 15’. I told myself that I had already come this far, and I already had hope because weight is not determined by just genetics, but there is a gene-environment interaction. I just had to keep my discretionary metabolism up, which would keep my resting metabolism in check.

I am okay with the idea of maintaining my current weight, which is successfully done through exercise, but I feared that with my new sedentary lifestyle, I was probably going to gain weight I have never had before. And if that would happen, then my body would defend the new weight gained because my set point would readjust. So, heartbreakingly, I said goodbye to the everyday trips to the dessert table, and I restricted the useless excessive calories in order to not just maintain my current weight, but make sure I could lose any weight that I had gained already, because Dr. Nolan taught us that weight loss is more successful from caloric restriction than from exercise.

Even though I have been doing well with this new and improved lifestyle of independent exercise and dieting, my motivation is empowered by the scary possibility of my metabolism slowing down and my set weight readjusting. Without this information from the lectures in psychology class, I probably would’ve stuck to my nice break of no exercise and endless eating. I would not have understood the science behind why it is so hard to get back in the shape you were once in, and for that, I am grateful!