Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY

A28 SCIENCE
Thursday 15 June 2017

Sweet sizzlin’ beans! Fancy names may boost healthy dining

BY LINDSEY TANNER er-choice beets with no
AP MEDICAL WRITER added sugar,” ‘’high an-
CHICAGO (AP) -- Re- tioxidant beets,” or simply
searchers tried a big serv- “beets.”
ing of food psychology Almost one-third of the
and a dollop of trickery to nearly 28,000 diners chose
get diners to eat their veg- a vegetable offering dur-
etables. And it worked. ing the study.
Veggies given names The tasty-sounding offer-
like “zesty ginger-turmer- ing was the most popular,
ic sweet potatoes” and selected by about 220 din-
“twisted citrus-glazed car- ers on average on days it
rots” were more popular was offered, compared
than those prepared ex- with about 175 diners who
actly the same way but chose the simple-label
with plainer, more health- vegetable. The healthy-
ful-sounding labels. Din- sounding labels were the
ers more often said “no least popular.
thanks” when the food Diners also served them-
had labels like “low-fat,” selves bigger portions of
‘’reduced-sodium” or the tasty-sounding veg-
“sugar-free.” etables than of the other
More diners chose the the healthiness of vegeta- as less tasty, so the aim was habits and make a dent choices.
fancy-named items, and bles, doing so may actually to make it sound as good in the growing obesity epi- Turnwald emphasized that
selected larger portions of backfire,” said lead author as more indulgent, fatten- demic . “there was no deception”
them too in the experiment Bradley Turnwald, a gradu- ing fare. “This novel, low-cost inter- - all labels accurately de-
last fall at a Stanford Uni- ate student in psychology. Researchers from Stan- vention could easily be scribed the vegetables, al-
versity cafeteria. Other research has shown ford’s psychology depart- implemented in cafeterias, though diners weren’t told
“While it may seem like a that people tend to think ment tested the idea as restaurants, and consumer that the different-sounding
good idea to emphasize of healthful sounding food a way to improve eating products to increase selec- choices were the exact
tion of healthier options,” same item.
U.S. physicists win Spanish they said. The results illustrate “the in-
teresting advantage to in-
The results were published
prize for work in gravity waves Monday JAMA Internal dulgent labeling,” he said.
Dr. Stephen Cook, a Uni-
Medicine.
versity of Rochester child-
The study was done over
MADRID (AP) -- Astrophysi- went to American physi- holes colliding 1.3 billion 46 days last fall. Lunchtime hood obesity researcher,
cists whose work led to the cians Rainer Weiss, Kip light-years from Earth. The vegetable offerings were called the study encour-
ground-breaking detec- Thorne and Barry Barish discovery was seen as a given different labels on aging and said some high
tion of cosmic gravitational and to the LIGO Scientific eureka-type moment in different days. school cafeterias have
waves first predicted by Ein- Collaboration group of in- observing the universe. For example, on one day also tried different labels to
stein have been awarded ternational astrophysicists. Weiss, Thorne and late diners could choose “dy- influence healthy eating.
Spain’s Princess of Asturias Physicists used LIGO in- physician Ronald Drever namite chili and tangy “It shouldn’t be a surprise
2017 scientific research. struments in 2015 to de- founded LIGO - Laser In- lime-seasoned beets.” to us because marketing
Prize organizers said tect a gravitational wave terferometer Gravitational- On other days the same people have been doing
Wednesday the award generated by two black Wave Observatory .q item was labeled “light- this for years,” Cook said.q