The professor of pigging out

Do you have advice for people who are trapped in a cycle of yo-yo dieting?

Nobody gains 50 pounds overnight, but everybody hopes to lose 50 pounds overnight. Realize that the easiest way to lose weight, if you do not want to have it be your major objective in life, the easiest way to do so is to do so gradually. Do it in the same way you gained the weight, by slowly carving out 200 or 300 calories a day. In a year's time you're going to be 30 pounds lighter, without having felt like you're sacrificed.

Why do you think it's a bad idea for people to ban their personal vice foods -- whether French fries or ice cream -- in order to lose weight?

Any method that is based on deprivation is bound to backfire. It doesn't matter whether you're being deprived of your favorite foods, television or affection. Any deprivation is going to find a way to get back at you. Smaller amounts of these foods can still end up satisfying people, still give them some degree of satisfaction, without leading them to binge. If you get a good taste of something, sometimes that's all it takes.

What are the biggest myths about why Americans overeat?

Because the food tastes really good or because we're really, really hungry. The reality is that we overeat because of the cues we set up for ourselves -- like the way we arrange our tables, the way we plate our food, where we put serving dishes, who we eat with, what we watch or what we do while we eat, where we store our food, how we eat at work, and the size of the packages we buy.

What foods do you find people most frequently gravitate to for comfort?

We did a survey of over 1,000 people, and 40 percent of their favorite comfort foods ended up being things that are reasonably healthy for you -- meal-related foods, like soup, pasta, steak, casseroles -- as opposed to candy, cakes, chips and ice cream. But one thing is that men tend to prefer those meal foods -- the pasta, beef, soup, casseroles -- while women tend to eat more of the other things.

Why is that?

When we asked men, they said: "When I eat meal-related foods, I really feel cared for, I feel like I'm important, I feel like I'm the center of attention." And when we asked women about those same foods, women said: "Yeah, we like them, they just don't really give us that much comfort, because when we think of these foods we think of the fact that we're probably going to have to make them, we're probably going to have to clean up after them." For women, they didn't have associations of comfort. They had associations of work. That's why women tended to gravitate more toward some of these foods that are less effort -- ice cream, cake, cookies, candy, chips -- all of which are pretty much pre-made foods. They don't take much effort to dish up, or to clean up.

New York City has considered requiring some chains, like McDonald's and Starbucks, to add calorie labeling to restaurant menus and menu boards. But you're skeptical that this will help people make better food choices. Why?

We've found over and over that labeling is good for the people who care, and a lot of people just don't care. A lot of people are in an indulgent mood when they eat out. In some cases, it ruins the whole experience. When I go to a French restaurant, I don't really want to know how many calories are in something, because I'm there to have fun, not to kind of feel guilty the whole meal.

Why have so many fast food restaurants failed at promoting their new "healthy" offerings, like the McDonald's McLean burger?

There are two big reasons. First of all, most of those items have been set up for failure. Anytime you tell someone a food is healthy, the connotation is that it's going to taste bad -- even if the food is good. And if you're expecting it's going to taste bad, you'll have convinced yourself it tastes bad before you even bite into it. Labeling something "healthy" is the kiss of death.

The second reason is that the return on investment that companies look for in these foods might be too high. They may expect it to sell much better than is realistic, and as a result they might pull the plug prematurely. They may not let the market fully develop.

What we need to realize is that the typical person who is walking into a fast food restaurant doesn't have a BMW or a Jaguar. They're walking in with a few bucks in their pocket, and they want to have something good to eat, and feel full.

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