Study: Fast food fans bad at estimating calories

A study from Cornell's Food Psychology lab published in the Annals of Internal Medicine indicates that the larger the fast food portion we choose, the worse we are at estimating how many calories we're getting.

"One of the big dangers of fast-food lunches is that we not only mindlessly overeat, but we mindlessly underestimate how much we've eaten," says Brian Wansink, lead author of the study. "The more we eat, the less we think we eat," Wansink says. "Nobody is immune from doing this, from the lightest person to the heaviest person."

Some of the studies findings include

• People who ate larger meals estimated they had eaten an average of 675 calories but consumed 1,188, a 513-calorie difference.
• Those eating smaller meals guessed they had eaten an average of 419 calories but consumed 514, a 95-calorie difference.
• Overweight people's meals contained an average of 957 calories, compared with 683 for normal-weight people.
• Both overweight and normal-weight people underestimated the calories by about the same amount.

via USA Today