If you care about eating clean, you almost certainly carry around a mental list of foods that are “good” or “bad.” Hooray for spinach. Boo for French fries. Shoving foods into categories like this makes it easier for us to make decisions on the fly, and saves our precious mental resources for tasks more important than planning our next meal. Generally, this is a good thing, but attaching judgment to particular categories can get you in trouble. How? Moralizing your food choices creates a subtle, unconscious shift in your behavior. For example, if you have eaten a food you believe is “good,” you will feel virtuous every time you eat it. More often than you’d probably care to admit (or even realize), a food choice that earns you a figurative pat on the back (e.g. a spinach salad for lunch) helps you justify a bit of “bad” behavior later on (e.g. ordering fries at happy hour). This is called “moral licensing,” and it has been the undoing of many a dieter’s best intentions. MORE: Three Things Naturally Thin People Never Do Break the effects of moral licensing by remembering that the reason you’re eating healthy foods is because you enjoy them, not because they’re good for you and you “should” eat them. Eating spinach doesn’t make you a good person, just like eating French fries doesn’t make you a bad person. MORE: Three Mistakes that Make Healthy Eaters Gain Weight Striking a healthy balance between clean eating and indulging is always a challenge, but moral licensing makes it even harder by deluding you into thinking you’re making better choices than you really are. If you catch yourself attaching moral values to the foods you eat, pause and reflect on the attributes of the food itself, such as the taste, texture, and smell. When you can appreciate a food for its own sake, the “health halo” loses its power.
