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Staying Healthy
"Light" meals linked to overeating
- By Heidi Godman, Executive Editor, Harvard Health Letter
News briefs
Sticking to reasonable portion sizes is an important way to control your weight. But it’s easy to trick yourself into thinking it’s okay to take a few extra bites. An example comes from a study published online Jan. 15, 2022, by the journal Appetite. Scientists gave 37 people identical servings of pasta salad on two different occasions. On one occasion, the meal was labeled "light"; on another, it was labeled "filling." People eating the "light" meal ate a little more (and said they felt less full) than people eating the "filling" meal. Study authors say the findings indicate that expectations about how full you’ll feel after eating can influence your actual food intake, and that you should use caution if you’re buying foods marketed as "light" to lose weight.
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A Guide to Healthy Eating: Strategies, tips, and recipes to help you make better food choices
Eat real food. That’s the essence of today’s nutrition message. Our knowledge of nutrition has come full circle, back to eating food that is as close as possible to the way nature made it. Based on a solid foundation of current nutrition science, Harvard’s Special Health Report A Guide to Healthy Eating: Strategies, tips, and recipes to help you make better food choices describes how to eat for optimum health.
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