Starting your meal with a high-calorie dessert might help you cut calories
It sounds weird, but hear the researchers out
It sounds weird, but hear the researchers out
It sounds weird, but hear the researchers out
If you're looking to cut calories, eating a delicious dessert might actually help you achieve your goals. It'd be pretty fair for you to assume there's no way this could possibly be true, but the American Psychological Association might have proof.
In , researchers from Tecnológico de Monterrey and the University of Arizona found that choosing a high-calorie dessert at the start of a meal led people to make better food choices for their main course. That, in turn, led to less overall calories consumed during the meal than when people chose a healthy dessert (i.e., fruit).
The idea is that the people who chose fruit felt they made a good choice and thus deserved higher-calorie food; they then ended up consuming more calories. Similar studies conducted to test the concept in online settings — ordering food on a delivery system, for example — found similar results. Presenting a dessert first had a strong effect on how people determined the rest of their meal.
The one caveat here is people's state of mind. When put under stress (remembering a 7-digit number compared to a two-digit number, for example), people were more likely to choose both a high-calorie dessert and a high-calorie meal.
Martin Reimann, one of the lead study authors, summed it up this way: "People should be aware that their initial food choices and their mindset may affect the overall healthiness of their meals."
What does this mean for you? The all-or-nothing mentality isn't doing you any favors! Enjoy dessert, or enjoy a heavier main meal, but if you're trying to lose or maintain weight, doing both regularly won't help.