If you thought that eating low-fat foods would help you watch your weight, especially if you happen to be obese, well then you better think again, for it seems that the only thing that such foods do, is make you pile on even more calories.

In two studies conducted by Cornell researchers, the team found that people eat an average of 28 percent more total calories when they eat low-fat snacks than regular ones.

"Obese people can eat up to 45% more," reports lead researcher Brian Wansink (Ph.D.), in the book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.

Wansink revealed the reason behind this is just because some foods say low-fat, they don`t necessarily mean low-calories.

"People don`t realize that low-fat foods are not always low-calorie foods," Wansink said.

Fat is often replaced with sugar. Low-fat snacks are an average of 11 percent lower in calories, but people wrongly believe they are around 40 percent lower.

In the first study, two groups of people attending a holiday open-house were given identical regular chocolates that were labelled as either "Regular" or as "Low-fat."

The researchers found that people served themselves an average of a third more of the candies, which would have translated into 28 percent more calories if they had actually been low-fat.

Co-author Pierre Chandon, marketing professor at INSEAD in France, said that a second study showed this is because people tend to feel "less guilty" when they eat low-fat foods, and so they actually end up eating more.

"People believe they will feel less guilty eating the low-fat foods, so they tend to overindulge," he said.

source: http://www.zeenews.com/

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