Is dessert your favorite part of eating? Are you a person who can't stop thinking about dessert? According to a recent study, this should not have to be a weakness of yours. Choosing the sweet part before the rest of your meal may help you choose healthier options.
Do we vary our choice online and in real life?
Research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, verified how the order of food presentation affected their choice and carried out the experiment both in a cafeteria and in online orders.
The researchers tested the food choices of 134 volunteers at a buffet line. In one experiment, they were first presented with a dessert seen as "indulgent"(cheesecake), before looking at the other options for the main course: an "indulgent" option of fried fish with tartar sauce and fries, or a "healthy" option of grilled chicken fajitas with a small green salad.
When the sweet dessert was first offered, people chose the healthier entrée and side almost 69% of the time. But when they saw it at the end, they chose the healthy dishes only 31% of the time. In contrast, when the healthiest dessert (a fresh fruit mix) was offered first, the main course and healthy side dish were only chosen 46% of the time.
This same trend also occurred in online orders. When the sweet dessert was shown first, 56% of participants chose a lighter entrée, and only 44% percent chose the healthier entrée if they saw the healthy dessert first.
Choosing a cheesecake could make you consume fewer calories
The calorie count for the meal with sweet dessert and healthy entrees was lower than when the dessert was healthy and higher caloric entrees were chosen. Specifically, we're talking about 496 calories versus 865. So you may be eating fewer calories when you choose cheesecake.
This is due to the belief that if we choose a healthier dessert first (fruit), then you will make less healthy choices in the rest of the dishes. «Healthy foods can indicate progress toward a goal and therefore make people more likely to take some license to choose less healthy dishes", commented the author of the study.
That is to say, your mind thinks that you have already made a good choice by betting on a healthy dessert, so it takes the liberty of giving itself a small tribute in the rest of the dishes. The same applies to the other option. If you've already "sinned" on dessert, your mind tries to choose healthier dishes to compensate. Who was going to tell us that choose a brownie first could help us keep better decisions!