“Never let yourself get fooled by the same pitcher on the same pitch on the same day.” —George Kell, baseball Hall of Fame-er.

People whose livelihood is marketing food start to develop a few tricks of the trade. They learn “Creamy mash potatoes” sounds much less appetizing than “Creamy low fat mash potatoes”, “Delicious Sugar Free Chocolate Chip cookies” sells much better than “Super Calorie loaded heart-stopping cookie”.

Marketers know the best way to advertise in order to draw eyes and buyers. However these techniques often stretch the truth a little (or a lot).

Those “low fat”, “reduced fat” and “naturally sweetened” products often meet the claims on their labels but still manage to contain less than healthy ingredients. Just because you don’t have the sniffles doesn’t mean you don’t have the common cold or maybe even worse.

According to WebMD, foods advertised as fat free often tend to incorporate less than healthy additives in order to maintain the same or similar taste as the original product. In addition, they often fail to fill a person up and thus may lead to overeating.

“Sometimes “fat-free” is also, well, taste-free. And to make up for that, food makers tend to pour other ingredients– especially sugar, flour, thickeners, and salt– into the products. That can add calories. Plus, if the foods aren’t that appealing, they may be less satisfying, so you may eat too much of them.” –WebMD

Make note of the three foods listed below that don’t quite measure up to their expectations.

The Psychology of the Healthy Chip

You have no doubt seen the commercial. A girl sits in a chair by a bowl of chips. She eyes the crisp fried potatoes slices and sighs despondently. If only chips were healthy, if only there was some sort of alternative. Then there is, baked chips, vegetable chips, chips made out of tofu (you name it, they probably make it).

Then the girl babbles on about weight loss and how easy the low-fat chips made shedding those extra pounds to another friend who swears she can’t believe the change.

Behind the “low fat” potato chip rests a little bit of a brain trick (not the nice sort either). When a person hears low fat they often subconsciously translate the label to high consumption.

Health reports a 25% increase in average low fat chip consumption due to the unfortunate phenomenon.

“The risk is thinking the reduced fat version is a healthier chip alternative and eating more than you would have otherwise. In fact, a Cornell study shows that we serve ourselves 25% more when foods are labeled low-fat compared to those without the label.”- Health

In the end the percent of fat in low fat chips often evens out or surpasses the regular product.

Stop if you value your brain cells

Before researching diet soda, I thought I would write mostly about the sugar content and calories. However the effects I found were so shocking that I will probably not mention anything about the many other factors that make diet soda a major red herring in the marketing world.

Diet soda substitutes sugar for a high concentration of chemicals. According to Prevention, these chemicals act within the brain and sometimes lead to serious health issues.

“That’s because the chemicals that make up the artificial sweetener aspartame may have altered brain chemicals, nerve signals, and the brain’s reward system, which leads to headaches, anxiety, and insomnia, according to a review in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. And a 2013 animal study found that rats that drank diet soda had damaged cells and nerve endings in the cerebellum—the part of the brain responsible for motor skills.” –Prevention

In addition, diet soda has been suspected of increasing appetite for sweet foods, probability of diabetes and obesity, bone weakening, kidney decline and many other critical damages to the human body.

Drink real soda, not chemicals.

Dairy Products

As with the two above mentioned foods, loads of sugar often gets added to low fat or non-fat dairy product in order to enhance flavor.  In these cases, the extra additives counteract the benefits of a decrease in fat.

In addition, an increasing amount of nutritionist argue that full fat foods may in fact be healthier than low fat foods. According to Time magazine the nature of the calorie may be more important than the number of them.

“Some researchers argue that not all calories are equal—especially when it comes to weight gain. Also, focusing on calories-per-serving largely ignores a mammoth factor when it comes to obesity: fullness.”–Time

So how do you avoid the low fat trap? The answer: read the label. It’s a simple as that. Learn what to look for and make sure the ingredients are natural. General rule of thumb: if you can’t pronounce it don’t eat it.

The choice is yours. Will you be nutty for health?

This writer can be reached via Twitter: @skylerklee and via Email: Skyler Lee

To see more from Health Nut, read Health Nut: Do you need the gym or does the gym need you?