Eating Organic Food Diet Can Lead to Weight Gain

It is only since the beginning of the 20th century that a large number of new synthetic chemicals have become a part of our food supply. Increasingly people are searching for foods that are closer to nature. Unfortunately, new work finds that eating organic food diet actually serves to skew a person's perceptions about food, and not in a good way.

We assume these items are lower in calories, so it's fine to indulge. Exercise is also seen as less necessary after eating a so-called "organic" desert.

These findings follow through on earlier work that shows food labels do spur misperceptions.

Calling a food "low fat" on the label makes buyers think it has fewer calories. Those items labelled as "low cholesterol" are often judged as having less fat. Americans' as a whole have a strong tendency to associate "organic" with healthiness according to experts.

Researchers conducted two experiments to see if "organic" labels translated into "fewer calories" in the mind of the consumer.

The first, involving 114 college students who were asked to read nutrition labels on cookies - they were described as either "Oreo cookies" or "Oreo cookies made with organic flour and sugar." Both had 160 calories but participants were asked to rate whether they thought the cookies had fewer calories or more calories than other brands on a scale of 1 (fewest calories) and 7 (most calories).

Not surprisingly, the cookies described as "organic" were rated as having fewer calories than conventional cookies. The "organic" cookies got a rating of 3.9; the traditional ones got an average rating of 5.17. Participants also thought the "organic" cookies could be eaten more than the non-organic ones. The impact on calorie judgments was largest for those who held pro-environment views or those who valued organic methods in the first place.

The second of the two studies involved 215 college students who read a story about a character who wanted to lose weight but wanted to skip her after dinner run.

Participants read that she'd eaten either an organic or regular, non-organic desert, then they responded whether it was okay for her to skip the run. Readers were more lenient to the character if she'd eaten the organic dessert instead of the regular one.

Both studies suggest that "organic" claims might not just foster lower calorie estimates, and have us eating more than we should of this food, but they may also have us thinking that we've already made progress toward losing weight when in truth nothing has changed.

It is important to keep in mind that the word "organic" on a food label refers to how the food is processed, not to how much fat or calories it has.

Food that calls itself organic must be free of food additives, processed with fewer artificial methods, materials and conditions (chemical ripening, food irradiation, genetically modified ingredients). Pesticides are allowed as long as they're not synthetic.

Yet experts have found that if people think a portion of food is better, has fewer calories and fat, you're likely to eat all that much more of it. Often people have the feeling that by eating healthy they don't have to do other things like exercise.

Organic food sales in the United States have grown rapidly over the past twenty years, from $1 billion in 1990 to a staggering $25 billion just last year. Eating organic food diet items generally cost from 10-40% more than their conventionally produced counterparts. If you do decide to (or continue to) buy "organic" know that it isn't a free pass to eat all you want.