Who can forget Subway’s spokesman, Jared, who lost all of that weight by walking everyday to Subway in order to eat a vegetable sub for his lunch?
His story revolutionized Subway’s image, making it seem like a healthy alternative to McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants.
But is it really that much healthier or is it just our perception that has changed?
Brian Wansink, PhD, the Director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell, has studied how environmental cues influence what we eat.
One of his more than 700 food studies includes the “McSubway” study, which took a look at eating habits when people perceived food to be healthy (at Subway) vs. unhealthy (at McDonald’s).
In this study, Wansink and his colleagues interviewed 250 lunch goers each from Subway and McDonald’s.
They asked survey participants what they had eaten and how many calories they thought was in their lunch.
The average McDonald’s patron thought they had eaten only 876, when in actuality they had eaten 1,093 (25% more).
When asked if they looked for nutritional information when ordering, only 57 were able to recount any nutritional information for the food. The majority didn’t feel that knowing the nutritional content would affect their choice of lunches.
Now onto the Subway crowd.
Of the Subway crowd, 157 could answer questions about the nutritional content of the food. The general impression among the 250 patrons was that the food was healthy, creating a kind of “halo effect” that appeared to encompass all of the food at Subway, not just the healthy options.
A majority of the patrons had added things like cheese, bacon, mayo, sodas, and chips to their orders, thus partially negating their healthier choice.
The Subway patrons had eaten on average 644 calories, though they estimated it to be 34% less (495 calories).
What did Wansink conclude from this study?
While the Subway lunch was less caloric than the McDonald’s one overall, the McDonald’s crowd expected the food to have more calories and so estimated more accurately.
This has huge ramifications when trying to budget our calories throughout the day.
When I think that my lunch was only 495 calories, I may eat one more of those wonderful rosemary-lemon sugar cookies in my pantry. But if my lunch was in fact 644 calories, I will have overeaten that day.
And if I did this on a continual basis, I’d gain 15 pounds that year simply from my own miscalculations.
To learn more about how the mind and body interact, check out our courses.
Do your patients’ perception of whether food is healthy influence their caloric consumption? Please leave a comment below.
Meanwhile, take a look at your copy of Joy of Cooking. Brian found some interesting information that we’ll tell you about in our next post.
Great article!Loved that very much!
A very interesting study, I just have to write about this essay. Although, probably, it would be better for me to order this essay. On this site I looked at a review of the studymoose service where I will order the text. I used to do this in another service, I hope that this one also turns out to be of high quality.
One of the things I have found most interesting after having a serious illness! Is the huge lack of protein in a large number of peoples diets! If I just say to people how about adding a little more protein and reducing your fat and salt intake in direct proportion! They don’t feel they are making much of a sacrifice but the overall effect is amazing! They have more energy their taste buds become more active as fat and especially salt can have an amazing impact on these sensitive little things! Even a 5% swap one meal a day can make a huge difference! I would be interested in any Practical Scientific Research on this as I used this little option to offer clients whom over eating causes all sorts of depression and other Psychological Symptoms impacted by the huge chemical imbalance created by not eating healthily which you touched on previously! Love to hear some feed back!
The interesting fact about Joy of Cooking recipe book is that even though the recipes are ”rich” the fact is ”people over eat” Right now there is a search and many are running with information on ‘Centenerians’ who live to 100 + and the discovery is… they eat very little….
one fact to remember is: digestion takes more energy than climbing some tall mountain. this overworking the system ages us by using up too much energy. another fact to remember is: the less we eat the less we work in digesting the foods thus making sure that we choose nutrient dense calorie restricted meals. and the last fact is; sleep plays a major role in this.
While we sleep we repair, heal, rejuvenate. So it’s not so much the Joy of Cooking It’s what we do with it. Preparing rich foods and not overeating or supersizing should be the emphasis.
To healthy future; yeah that future is here and it’s now.
Oh and always eat dessert first ! Joz
I owned several nutritional counseling centers for about 10 years and most of the counseling was related to health issues resulting from poor or unintelligent food choices. So you article really stirs up the frustration with the general lack of understanding about the detriment to the human body of poor choices over a lifetime. In the south, each parishioner tries to “outcook” the next to impress the pastor. Most are hugely overweight. Many give up alcohol and replace it with sugar. Grandparents try to “win” their G’children’s love with rich food and dessert. Restaurants offer “all you can eat” casseroles and fried chicken. Yet, most of the healthy seniors that I know have LONG ago abandoned their old casserole receipes. I appreciate your podcasts and all you do to position society toward a healthy future. Thanks Diana