When's the last time you were guiltily scraping your way to the bottom of an ice cream carton and noticed this message: "150 calories per pint"?
Yes, per pint.
Foods aimed at helping you slim down have been around for decades, but a recent wave of ultra-low calorie products such as the 150-calorie per pint dessert Arctic Zero is making a direct appeal to our national sense of gluttony.
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AP Photo - - Smaller calorie counts allow consumers to indulge in larger portion sizes while sticking to their diet plan. Tofu Shirataki noodles are sold in two 20-calorie servings, but it is assumed most consumers will eat the whole bag.
"What we're seeing here is a strategy that says Americans like to stuff their faces," said food industry analyst Phil Lempert. "And these mean we don't have to sacrifice."
With two-thirds of American adults overweight or obese, health officials have long warned that ballooning portion sizes are a major factor. Now food manufacturers are testing whether the desire for big servings can make peace with our need to shed pounds or at least make big profits.
"It's fine to eat one serving of ice cream, but I can't remember the last time I sat down with a pint and ate half a cup," said Amit Pandhi, CEO of Arctic Zero, Inc., whose pints of "ice cream replacement" prominently feature the 150-calorie message.
"We feel like a serving is an entire pint. And if you're looking at it from that point of view, our product is the only one where you can eat a whole pint and not feel like you're doing something terrible," Pandhi said.
Similarly, commercials for MGD 64, a 64-calorie beer from Chicago-based MillerCoors being heavily marketed this year, pits a tiny martini or petite glass of wine against a cool, full bottle of brew. Meanwhile, the Web site for its competitor, Anheuser-Busch's Bud Select 55, promises no pain and no gain, boasting that you can burn off the product's 55 calories with ready? a 54-minute nap.
And though Tofu Shirataki noodles from California-based House Foods America Corporation, offer two 20-calorie servings per 8-ounce package, it's understood that you'll eat the whole bag.
Which means that if you were feeling a need to binge, you could pound down a pile of noodles, a couple brews and a pint of "ice cream" all for 300 calories the same as one McDonald's cheeseburger.
Consumers seem to be buying it. Sales of Arctic Zero, introduced in 2009, have grown 15 to 20 percent per month for the past 18 months, Pandhi said.
Many of these products are achieving their low-calorie status with different ingredients than similar products in the past. Arctic Zero is made primarily of whey protein and gets its sweetness from organic monk fruit, an Asian gourd the company said is 150 times sweeter than sugar. Tofu Shirataki noodles are made by blending tofu and the root of konnyaku, an Asian yam.
Volume vs. content
Health advocates, dietitians and government programs decry the American propensity to over indulge. But what if we were meant to eat as much as possible? UCLA neuroscientist Dean Buonomano said in his new book, "Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives," that the human brain was designed to guide us through a world in which dying from starvation was a greater possibility than becoming obese.
In 2000, Penn State professor Barbara Rolls began promoting what she calls volumetrics, an approach to healthy eating that shifts the focus from reducing portion size to reducing the number of calories per portion.
"When people sit down to a meal and don't know the calorie count they tend to take a set amount by weight and volume," said Rolls, whose new book "The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet" will be published next year.
So she said the solution is not to reduce the volume of food on the plate, but rather the number of calories in the same volume (called the calorie density).
She urges people to do that by adding plenty of water-rich, calorie-light foods, such as fruits and vegetables.
"The idea is not that you can or should eat a much bigger volume than you typically do," Rolls said. "It's that if you eat your usual amount you're going to feel full but with fewer calories.
Some experts say there's a place for these ultra-low calorie products in that kind of equation. Lisa Lillien, creator of the daily e-mail service (www.Hungry-Girl.com) and author of five cookbooks, relies on many specific products, including Tofu Shirataki noodles, to create satisfying, abundant, but still calorically light meals.
"The Hungry Girl philosophy is, 'How do you swap out certain foods for other foods so you can make recipes taste great but still come in with fewer calories?'" Lillien said. "I want to get the biggest bang for my calorie buck because I like eating a lot of food."