5 Restaurant Scams That Sabotage Weight Loss

“We gotta order a pepperoni pie,” my friend Jeff said Sunday afternoon. “And some of those cheese sticks.”

He was over at my house watching football, but was more enraptured by the food ads than by Tom Brady. As Brady scrambled for position to toss a deep pass, Jeff was wide open to receive an extra 2,000 calories of fat and carbs.

Seeing him salivate over the the cheesy come-ons, I couldn’t help but be struck by how much food marketers are like football teams, since they both employ a lot of misdirection. In the NFL, the quarterback shouts out confusing signals like “Red 74 Oklahoma hut hut!” and the running backs act like decoys, pretending to carry the ball as the QB drops back.

Restaurants do the same thing when marketing their food, filling their menus with chicanery and deception, especially when it comes to “healthy” offerings. Eat This, Not That! took a hard look at the healthy head-fakes restaurants use. Here’s how to muster your defenses and win the weight loss game when you eat out.

(For more proven weight-loss tips, read our special new Eat This, Not That! report on the 20 Habits Skinny People Live By.)

“Healthy” Head-Fake #1

Healthy words describing unhealthy foods

Take two popular menu items: A Carrot Walnut Muffin or the Chocolate Croissant. Which one’s healthier? Surely your health-conscious conscience jumps at the thought of starting your day with carrots and walnuts, yet the truth is fuzzier. Au Bon Pain’s healthy sounding muffin offering packs 540 calories—plus 7 grams more fat, double the carbs (73 g vs. 34 g), and the four times the sugar of a 300-calorie Starbucks Chocolate Croissant! Remember, “muffin” is just a way to get you to eat cake for breakfast.

Best Defense: Find the unhealthiest word on any menu item, and let that be your guide. After all, the calorie count of a fish fry is not about the fish, it’s about the fry. (Arm yourself in the grocery store, too—avoid these fattening 5 “Health” Foods Worse Than a Donut.)

“Healthy” Head-Fake #2 

Foods on the “low carb” menu

Anything “low” in one thing is usually high in something else. Consider Applebee’s Low Carb Breakfast Bowl, which is super low-carb but starts your day with 52 grams of fat—nearly an entire day’s worth. This 660-calorie meal is like dumping an entire farm’s worth of animals into one heart-stopping combination of eggs, sausage, bacon and cheese. Their Ham, Egg & Cheese Biscuit won’t make Dr. Atkins happy, but it will save you 210 calories and 28 grams of fat.

Best Defense: Eat for balance. Don’t be fooled by eating only “low-carb” or “low-fat.”

“Healthy” Head-Fake #3

A menu calls meals “snacks:

Your restaurant may call it a “snack,” but your dietician would call it “dinner.” Earlier this year, Dunkin’ Donuts made headlines after calling a 660-calorie bacon ranch chicken sandwich a “snack,” part of a rebranding campaign—“We’re not moving into lunch,” the CEO told AP. “We’re in snacking.” (With a snack like that, who’d need lunch?) Meanwhile, Arby’s offers a “Snack and Save” menu with alleged snacks like the 550-calorie Crispy Onion Mighty Minis, which also come with 30 grams of fat and half a day’s sodium.

Best Defense: Snack, but snack healthy.  A recent Nutrition Journal study found that nutritious snacks promote weight loss. The key word there is nutritious. Fruit and nuts are snacks, but two mini onion burgers? Not so much. A good snack is in the 100-250 calorie range. Indulge guilt-free in any of these 50 Best Snack Foods for Weight Loss.

“Healthy” Head-Fake #4

The salad “decoys” trick

Restaurants have discovered a brilliant way to get you to order cheaper, more caloric food—they give you the option to order something else. It’s called “decoy marketing” in the restaurant trade. The idea is that punctuating a menu with healthy items like salads gives customers permission to order larger, junkier, more caloric meals than they would otherwise. A study at Boston University demonstrated how this worked; researchers saw French fries orders triple when salad was also an option. It’s a phenomenon experts have dubbed “vicarious goal fulfillment.” In other words, by simply acknowledging a healthy option, diners feel they have satisfied their dietary goals and can order whatever they want.

Best Defense: Remind yourself before you look at the menu that you’re on a mission to eat well. Remember that a burger has the same calorie count whether it’s next to the spring salad or the spring lamb.

“Healthy” Head-Fake #5 

Good-for-you foods with bad-for-you toppings

When a restaurant chain makes its mark serving massive slabs of fat and calories, even their attempts at “lite” foods can be corrupted by an instinct to slather and garnish. Take, for example, Ruby Tuesday’s Avocado Grilled Chicken Sandwich. How bad could this be? Well, by serving you a jumbo portion and topping it with bacon, Swiss and mayonnaise, the chain has built a 1,311-calorie monster with 2,833 mg of sodium and 64 grams of fat.

Best Defense: Customize it. If you like the sound of a grilled chicken avocado sandwich, then ask them to serve you exactly that—and maybe ask for a little mayo on the side.

By David ZincZenko

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/health/11-restaurant-scams-that-sabotage-weight-loss-104073010048.html