Obesity: Blame organic food? - CBS News

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(CBS) Can organic food make you fat? It's a question some people are asking, in light of a new studyshowing that consumers often assume - incorrectly - that organic fare contains fewer calories thanconventionally produced versions of the same foods.

In the study, 144 people at a shopping mall were asked to compare what they thought were"regular" and organic versions of chocolate cookies, plain yogurt, and potato chips, according to astatement released by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). Infact, all of the foods were organic - only the labels were different. Using a nine-point scale, theshoppers rated each food on 10 different attributes, including how it tasted and how much fat andhow many calories it contained.

The foods labeled "organic" were perceived to lower in calories and higher in fiber and overall morenutritious. That raises at least the possibility that people who seek out foods bearing the "organic"seal may be eating more than they would if they bought "regular" versions of the same foods. Moreresearch will be needed to confirm that hypothesis.

The study may reflect the "halo effect." That's the term psychologists use for the phenomenon inwhich how we perceive a particular trait of a person influences our perceptions of other traits of thesame individual, according to the statement. For example, people are sometimes assumed to beintelligent just because they are good-looking.

This isn't the first study to show that the halo effect can apply to food as well as to people. Previousresearch showed that people tend to consume more calories at fast-food restaurants that claim toserve healthy fare than at typical burger-and-fry joints.

The study, conducted by Wan-chen Lee, a graduate student at Cornell University, was scheduled tobe presented on April 10 at an FASEB conference in Washington, D.C.

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