Health Halo Hides Calories

Let’s say you’re Keebler … and you have an Elf. Furthermore, you have to sell cookies, but the current market is anti-fat.

This is an incredible dilemma!! You still have to make it taste good, but it can’t have a smidge of butter in it because you are marketing it as a “healthy low fat” option.

How do you make it taste good? Add sugar, and lots of it … principally in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup (because it’s about 11 times cheaper as an industrial sweetener than normal sugar).

So, you get something that is low in fat, so you reason, based on all you have heard, that this will be a great option for you. Very healthy, right??

Wrong.

In today’s NYTimes Health section, John Tierney writes about “The Health Halo” effect. That is, food manufacturers HAVE to label their products as healthy, or you won’t buy them. But that labelling can focus on one aspect (low fat … leading you to believe you can eat tons of it), while avoiding the unhealthy aspect (high sugar … leading you to be hungrier for more, while consuming WAY too many calories in the process).

This is a perfect example of our Culture of Health at work, in this case against us.