This July 25, 2011 photo shows Tofu Shirataki noodles in Concord, N.H. Tofu Shirataki …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 Artic Zero - is making a direct appeal to our national sense of gluttony.
"What we're seeing here is a strategy that says Americans like to stuff their faces," says 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," says Amit Pandhi, CEO of Arctic Zero, Inc., whose pints of "ice cream replacement" prominently feature the 150-calorie message.
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"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," says Pandhi.
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 website 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.
"Most people eat the whole bag for a meal," says Yoko Difrancia, the company's marketing supervisor. "The whole bag is more realistic."
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 says.
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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 says is 150 times sweeter than sugar. Tofu Shirataki noodles are made by blending tofu and the root of konnyaku, an Asian yam.
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 says 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.
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