Dieters appear to be stuck in a trap—they try to be healthy in their food evaluations, but the attempt backfires. To make sense of the irony, we talked to one of the study’s authors, Dr. Caglar Irmak, an assistant professor at the Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina. While not a nutrition expert, Irmak, who studies consumer behavior, has a specific interest in studying how consumers infer the healthiness of food. 

Irmak found one reason dieters may overeat foods labeled as healthy: the food actually tastes better to them.

In one of his experiments, dieters thought “fruit chews” were tastier than “candy chews.” 
“If they perceive the item to be tasty, they eat even more,” says Irmak.

Which is exactly what happened when the researchers gave dieters a bowl of “fruit chews” to snack on during the movie—the dieters ate more jelly beans than the non-dieters.

“That was kind of astonishing to us because it’s ironic,” says Irmak. “They try to be healthy, but because of that goal, they’re actually eating less healthy.”

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