The 100 Calorie Trap

I don’t know about you, but I sure as heck love snacking. In fact, if I didn’t have to work all day and could somehow perpetually stay in liposuction surgery, I don’t think I’d ever stop eating snacks ever. It’s horrible. It’s wrong. But oh! have you ever had chips and dip before?

I bet nine out of ten of you agree with me. (Or would if I actually had ten readers.) Snacks are wonderful and the nearly uncontainable, almost ever-present urge to consume them is about the hardest thing we dieters have to deal with. If it weren’t for these excessive, omnipresent, tasty calories, we’d be just fine.

So it would seem like a miracle that the Food Industry, always with our best interests in mind, introduced the “100 calorie snack pack”. Just imagine! Diet versions of all our favorite snacks. It’s a miracle!

And that, my friends, is the trap. This is not diet food. Take it from a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research. Researchers from Arizona State University decided to study consumer behavior towards these mini snack packs. Ironically, the very device designed to control our caloric intake actually causes us to eat more. “Consumers perceive the mini-packs to be diet food,” the study says. And, of course, when we hear “diet” we think “free”. (Refer to last Friday’s post for a related story.)

My advice? Just avoid the stuff. How? Well, start by not buying it. If you absolutely need one hundred calories, grab an apple. But if you absolutely need one hundred calories of Doritos, make sure you eat just one bag. Then go straight to bed.