With Grocery Lists, Bad Choices Diminish
Plan ahead and double-check, shopping experts advise

(HealthDay News) -- When making a grocery list, take a cue from Santa: Make your list and check it twice to make sure that junk food isn't on it.

A recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that when the brain is busy trying to remember which foods to buy for the week, rational impulse control takes a backseat. And that can spell trouble for people trying to manage their weight.

"If I am spending mental effort formulating my list, then that is mental effort I do not have in terms of making sensible choices," researcher Yuval Rottenstreich, of New York University , told HealthDay . "The mental effort that you're using is mental effort you do not have to keep yourself in check -- controlling your desire for chocolate cake rather than fruit salad, for example."

And that's when "mistake" foods slip into the shopping cart.

The idea, Rottenstreich said, is to make the list and check it before heading to the store to make sure cookies, chips and candies haven't found their way onto the list.

Bonnie Taub-Dix, a New York-based dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, told HealthDay that "not having that security of a shopping list ahead of time could actually be quite negative, especially if the person is going through the supermarket hungry."

Rottenstreich and researchers at Duke University, where he was an associate professor of management at the time of the study, performed three separate experiments in which they asked college students to make consumer choices based on two real-life situations: "stimulus-based" decision-making, where objects are right in front of the student (as they would be in the supermarket), and "memory-based" decision-making, where students were asked to list things they wanted from memory.

One of the experiments focused on desserts. Students were given a choice of fruit salad and three less-healthy options, such as chocolate cake. When the items were presented to the students, they were more likely to make the healthy choice than when they had to rely on their memory.

"This points out that making a list from memory does have a bit of a downside," Rottenstreich said.

"I'd say that lists do work, in lots of ways," he said. "We're just aware now that there are trade-offs."

So, once you've made a shopping list, go through it again and cross off the less healthful selections, he suggested.

Taub-Dix said she uses lists but has come up with a way to not rely on memory when she needs to create a list. "I actually have a master list that I have typed out that's more or less the layout of my supermarket," she said. "On it, I will put all my fresh fruits and vegetables listed first, then the deli, etc. Then I just print it out and circle what I need. It makes shopping so much easier."

Taub-Dix also advises shoppers to stick to the supermarket's outside perimeter. "That's where the fresh produce, fruits and vegetables, the dairy aisle, chicken and lean meats usually are," she noted.

On the Web

To learn more about healthy foods, check out information provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

SOURCES: HealthDay News ; Yuval Rottenstreich, Ph.D., associate professor of management and organizations, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University, New York City; Bonnie Taub-Dix, M.A., R.D., dietitian, New York City, and spokeswoman, American Dietetic Association; March 2007, Journal of Consumer Research
Author: Serena Gordon
Publication Date: April 30, 2008
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