Social psychologist Paul Sparks says too many people fool themselves into believing their eating habits are healthier than average. Parks analyzed weight-losers' diets and compared them with their own perceptions of how healthily they ate.
"All believed that they are fewer fatty foods than the average person, and many underestimated the risks of becoming overweight," the researcher says. The study conducted at Britain's Institute of Food Research showed it was always someone else's diet that contained the french fries, the cakes and cookies.
And those claiming the healthiest of diets often overestimated the amounts of healthy foods such as vegetables and fruits they ate.
The research indicates that developing and enforcing diets on patients has to be done on a case-by-case basis, Sparks says. "General information doesn't seem to work. People don't think it's personally relevant -- so it has to be tailored to the individual."
