Salad on menu tricks us to order fries

Do you want fries with that?

If your quick-service restaurant menu has a salad option, chances are the answer is "yes." A recent study showed that customers, when shown identical menus with and without a salad, were more likely to order fries from the menu with a salad; more than three times as likely, in fact. While just 10% of subjects ordered fries on the menu without a salad (the other options were a baked potato and chicken nuggets), 33% ordered fries after they'd considered a salad.

The lesson? Just imagining ordering vegetables makes you feel virtuous enough to deserve a little deep-fried potato, I suppose. While this is good news for potato growers, and the owners of restaurants who've built more profit margin into their French fries, it's pretty terrible news for the rest of us. Get will power, or stop eating at fast food restaurants altogether.