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Great Diet Foods

By Giulia Draycott

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When you want a sure way to lose weight, without constantly weighing food quantities, calculating points and balancing glycaemic loads, it's easy to assume that any food with the word 'low fat', 'diet' or 'lite' in the description will help you shed the pounds. If only it were that simple...

A Cornell study in 2006 showed that actually, "People consume up to 50 percent more calories when they eat low-fat versions of snack foods than when they eat the regular versions... In fact, many low-fat-labelled foods have only about 30 percent fewer calories than their regular counterparts."¹

Why health labelling might make you fat

Explains Brian Wansink, Professor of Marketing and of Applied Economics at Cornell, "Low-fat labels trick people into eating more than regular labels. But the cruel twist is that these labels have an even more dramatic impact on those who are overweight. They are at danger of really overindulging when they see something with a low-fat label. If we are looking for an excuse to eat, low-fat labels give it to us."

There's also research to show that artificial sweeteners like saccharin actually encourage weight gain, even more than the same food sweetened with sugar². It's enough to put you off low fat, sugar free products entirely. So what should we be eating to lose weight?

Sadly there's no single miracle food that will melt away those pounds. Instead we should be eating a wide variety of healthy foods. But if you'd like to get your diet kick started, here are our top 10 best foods for successful weight-loss: