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.”