flickr photo credit: gotplaid?

“Zero Trans fat”. “No added sugar”. “May reduce the risk of heart disease!”.

We’ve all seen these claims on food packaging and in commercials. Are such products really healthy for us? Or can items labeled healthy by their marketers actually cause us to eat more poorly?  According to a recent New York Times article entitled “Health Halo Can Hide the Calories”, food health claims mask what’s really inside:

the trans-fat-free label on the crackers seemed to imbue them with a health halo that magically subtracted calories from the … meal

…all of us, even professional dieticians, make systematic mistakes when estimating how many calories are on a plate. Experiments showed that putting a “low fat” label on food caused everyone, especially overweight people, to underestimate its calories, to eat bigger helpings and to indulge in other foods.

Read the article…

So finally we get an answer to the nagging question:

Why, as Americans have paid more and more attention to eating healthily, have we kept getting fatter and fatter?

Possible answer: Because we are getting our health recommendations from the wrong sources.

What you need to know:

Health Claims were introduced to packaged foods in the early 1990′s, at the same time Nutrition labeling became mandatory. It was a compromise between the FDA and the food industry that feared full disclosure of nutrition information and ingredients would scare consumers away from certain foods. With health claims, manufacturers now had a chance to show off the positive aspects of their products on the front of package, while delegating the negatives to the side panel. You can always find something positive to say about a food, even junk food. Cola has no fat, vegetable oils contain no cholesterol, and a steak has no carbs. Does that make them a health food?

The “No Cholesterol” which appeared and still does on vegetable oils. Cholesterol is a fatty substance found only in products derived from animals. So obviously none will appear in Mazola. Still, each tablespoon  contains over 120 calories. Never seen a health claim talking about those calories, have you?

Just like newspaper headlines are used to entice readers to pick up a paper, health claims help convince consumers to add more packaged foods to the shopping cart. In a way, the health claims diminished the value of the nutrition label. They are printed in large bold letters, and are very easy to understand. No wonder people are paying attention.

What to do at the supermarket:

Do yourself a favor and ignore front of package health claims. To know what’s really going on, look straight for the side panel with the nutrition label and the ingredient list. And when you do have a craving for a snack, choose the tastiest one, without remorse. (Watch the portion size, though). Just don’t be fooled into believing your candy bar is  a health food because now it boasts zero trans fat.

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