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Too Much Food On Plate = Overeating & Recent Report on Fast Food Consumption

Too Much Food -

According to an article in Men's Health (9/04), the more food you pile on your plate will result in you eating more than what is needed, regardless of hunger. Penn State University researchers carried out a sneaky study, replacing a restaurant's standard serving of baked pasta with one nearly 50 percent larger. When customers were surveyed about both serving sizes, they rated each "appropriate." The test subjects finished the plus-sized portions, netting an extra 172 calories.

Try eating from the salad bar first, filling up on water and fiber-rich foods, which will cause food satiation without adding so many calories. Also, choosing a low-calorie dressing like oil and vinegar instead of chunky blue cheese will allow you to consume fewer calories. Finally, consider splitting an entrée with a dining partner or getting a to-go bag if the portions are very large.

Fast Food - Just One Meal is Risky

In a recent article in the Journal of Nutrition (4/07), a new study shows eating a single fatty meal heightens the unhealthy effects of stress on the heart, like raising blood pressure. Researchers found that people who ate a fatty, fast-food breakfast were more prone to suffer the negative effects of stress than those who ate a healthy, low-fat breakfast. "What's really shocking is that this can happen in just a single high-fat meal," says researcher Travis Campbell, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Calgary .

In the study, 30 healthy adults fasted the night before and then ate either a high-fat breakfast from McDonalds (a sausage McMuffin, an egg McMuffin and two hash brown patties), or a low-fat breakfast of dry cereal with skim milk, a cereal fruit bar, fat-free yogurt, and a glass of orange juice. Both meals contained about 800 calories, but the high-fat meal had 42 grams of fat, and the low-fat meal had 1 gram of fat.

Two hours later, the participants completed several stress-inducing tasks while researchers measured their cardiovascular response, including blood pressure, heart rate and resistance within the blood vessels.

The results showed that regardless of the task, the blood pressure response was greater among those who ate the high-fat meal than those who ate the low-fat one. The results suggest a new way in which high-fat diets may contribute to heart disease.

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