Beware: Food Temptations Can Be Found Everywhere

At my local pharmacy, where I end up buying a lot of my sundries, there is a display of bite-sized Butterfingers, Snickers and Milky Ways right next to the cash register--where shoppers paying for their purchases can’t help but be tempted by them. And buy them. Sometimes three at a time.

Outside the pharmacy, there’s a billboard advertising a premium ice cream and a market whose message board announces several enticing food specials. Within the radius of just a few miles, there must be two dozen restaurants, most of them serving fast food.

Yes, temptation is all around. Everywhere we go, we’re always being urged to eat. Billboards, magazine and television advertisements, store signs--they beckon to us like siren songs, asking us to partake of their yummies.

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Junk food (usually loaded with fat and calories) is not only cheap, it’s probably more accessible than any other retail product. And as if McDonald’s, Burger King, Jack in the Box and the others weren’t ubiquitous enough, every mall now has a “food court,” and every convenience store sells burgers, hot dogs, pizza and liter-sized soft drinks. Meanwhile, the last few years have seen an explosion of gas station mini-marts selling the same. No wonder every other driver seems to treat his car like a dining room.

At movie theaters, there’s very often little difference in price between a large whatever and a small whatever. So even though you’d intended not to overdo your treats consumption, you feel foolish paying $3 for a small drink or popcorn when, for 25 cents or 50 cents more, you can get three times as much. And because you buy it, you consume it.

That’s the word from Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Research Lab at the University of Illinois, in Champaign-Urbana, who has established as fact that the amount people eat is in direct proportion to the size of the serving they’re given. In Wansink’s recently completed study, 79 parents brought home either a 1- or 2-pound bag of M&Ms; for each family member to eat while watching a video. The average number of M&Ms; consumed by those holding the 1-pound bag was 112. But it was 156 from the 2-pound bag. Similar results were gleaned from bags of popcorn.

This is especially disturbing when you consider that even regular restaurants seem to be serving larger portions. Gone are the days of so-called California cuisine, when you needed a microscope to see your entree. I’ve been to restaurants in Los Angeles where the portions are so large that they could easily be split between two diners and both would go home satisfied.

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Food, food, food. On family trips and visits to museums, at birthday parties and events on the pier, during drop-ins and reunions, after soccer games and school functions--the one constant is food, food, food.

As much as anything, I think, the prevalence and availability of food is what accounts for the rise in America’s obesity rates, and the 300,000 premature deaths that occur annually from diet-related diseases and sedentary lifestyles. We’re only human, after all, and it takes just about superhuman willpower to get through the day without succumbing to the constant lure of all that artery-hardening, calorie-laden chow on every corner.

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So how do we avoid becoming automatons who succumb to endless temptation by picking up food at every stop along the way? Several ways.

* Don’t let yourself become overly hungry. Since it stands to reason that your willpower is vastly reduced when you’re ravenous, pace yourself throughout the day by eating something nourishing or smaller meals every three to four hours.

* Be prepared. Carry food with you--fresh cut garden vegetables, some fruit, a peanut butter sandwich, hard-boiled eggs, some sliced turkey, water, etc. This will keep you from having to raid a snack machine or a mini-mart (or a McDonald’s).

* Keep in mind that whatever you put in your mouth is going to have an effect on you, and realize that you have a choice in the matter. If one of your goals is good or better health, remember that every choice you make will either bring you closer toward your goal or take you farther from it. Just because you’re waiting for your car at the carwash doesn’t mean you have to buy and eat that prepackaged blueberry muffin.

* Make a contract with yourself in which you are permitted to give in to impulse once a week. That way, you don’t have to weigh the scrumptiousness of every chocolate bar that attracts you; you’ll just know that they’re off-limits until the appointed day . . . when you can enjoy whatever you finally choose without any guilt at all, making it taste all the better.

That’s exactly what I did at the pharmacy. I decided that I would ignore my impulse to indulge and buy chocolate only on Saturdays. Though it was difficult for a few days, even a few weeks, soon enough my struggle with temptation at the cash register surrendered to my contract with better health.

As a society, over the last several years we have become increasingly aware of smoking’s dangers to our health. In many ways, it’s no less important that we become aware of the constant, insidious messages about food that bombard--and stimulate--our appetites. The more clearly we think, the more likely we’ll be to make healthy choices about what, where and when we eat.

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Copyright 1998 by Kathy Smith

* Kathy Smith’s fitness column appears weekly in Health. Reader questions are welcome and can be sent to Kathy Smith, Health, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. If your question is selected, you will receive a free copy of her book “Getting Better All the Time.” Please include your name, address and a daytime phone number with your question.