Think [generic fast food chain] have been pro-health by offer­ing sal­ads on their menu (calorific value of said sal­ads aside)?

Maybe not, says new research show­ing that if a salad is on a menu, many are more likely to choose the unhealthy option than if the healthy choice was absent.

Col­lege stu­dents were given one of two menus. One menu fea­tured French fries, chicken nuggets and a baked potato; the other included those same items as well as a salad. The French fries, widely per­ceived as the least health­ful option, were three times as pop­u­lar with stu­dents select­ing from the menu that had the salad as they were with the other group.

As Kevin Purdy (Life­hacker) says,

Once you see the salad, real­ize it’s bet­ter for you and know that it’s an option, your inner sense of self-satisfaction is trig­gered, and then… you let your­self order fries, just because you were oh-so-smart enough to think about the salad, if only fleetingly.