A lengthy piece by Michael Moss of the New York Times this weekend, covers the decades long history of salt wars. The bottom line:

The salt industry is working overtly and behind the scenes to fend off public-health attacks on salt, using a shifting set of tactics that have defeated similar efforts for 30 years. Read more at the NYTimes…

Not surprising. Despite this, many food processors are trying to reduce the sodium content of their products in the past few years. Campbell’s is removing 20-25% of the salt from its canned soups. Frito-Lay is spending millions trying to create a new salt crystal with less sodium.

The biggest fear of the food industry is that salt will become regulated. This would mean warning labels on products high in sodium such as deli meats, soups, prepared meals, and canned foods. By taking preemptive measures, the companies hope to fend off government pressure.

It’s not simple to remove salt, because it has many other functions aside from flavor. It behaves as a preservative and it improves product texture and mouth feel.

What you need to know:

Salt is an essential nutrient for our bodies. However, when consumed in excess, the health benefits give way to detriments. Mounting evidence in the last 30 years has shown a clear connection between increased sodium consumption and hypertension. Cutting salt substantially from the American diet can prevent in 150,000 deaths annually.

Healthy adults should consume no more than 2300 mg of sodium a day, or about 1 tablespoon TEASPOON of salt. Many people need to consume much less, only 1500 mg. So when we hear that the national average is more than twice that, it’s clear we have a problem.

Most salt in the modern diet comes from processed foods. Only 20-25% is from home cooking or the salt shaker. The easiest way to add flavor to a product with cheap basic ingredients is to pump it up with salt. But using more expensive herbs and spices

If you can’t wait for the food industry to get rid of excess salt, start cooking more at home. Add salt only when the dish is almost ready because as it cooks, the liquids are reduced and the flavors become more pronounced. Using herbs and spices, you can still have very flavorful foods.

Salt is an acquired taste and you can calibrate your preference level over the course of a few weeks to months. In fact, many people who re-adjusted their taste buds, find it hard to enjoy canned products or overly salted dished served in restaurants.

What to do at the supermarket:

Don’t forget to look at the sodium count on products’ nutrition facts panel. Values over 600mg per serving are extremely high. In products such as breads, cereals, and cookies, anything over 150-200mg is too high.

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In a sign of the times, the Sweets & Snacks Expo earlier this week in Chicago focused on healthier treats.

Saleswomen for Hershey Co. handed out Reese’s Minis, chocolate-peanut butter cups the size of marbles, which they touted as ideal for portion control. Nearby, staff members for candy behemoth Mars chatted up their sugar-free Dove chocolates and the company’s goodnessKnows snack squares containing “phytonutrients that have been shown to help support healthy circulation.” read more from the LA Times…

While this trend toward healthy treats may sound like a great idea, we’d like to challenge the notion that snacks have to be nutritious for us. Candy should be a tasty interlude that we enjoy every once in while. If we realize that theses are treats, and NOT a part of our daily nutritional requirements, we won’t go looking for phytonutrients, antioxidants, and other health benefits in our chocolate bars. We’ll be getting them from real food.

Granted, removing trans fatty oils from candy bars is a great idea. But that doesn’t mean we need to eat one after every meal.

The greatest innovation in candy will be when people start consuming much smaller amounts than they currently do. But that’s not something the companies are interested in. Herein lies the conflict between health and profits.

What to do at the supermarket:

Try to limit the number of items you purchase in the snack aisles. Think of fruit as the first go to snack option instead of candy.

Have a great holiday weekend. To our friends in uniform, and our fallen brethren – we salute you!

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Yesterday we compared Kellogg’s Fiber Pus to Larabar. Despite the high amount of fiber in Kellogg’s bars, the clear nutrition winner was Larabar, with a short, understandable ingredient list and no added sugar.

Many readers asked about Clif bars, so here today is a comparison between Clif Banana Nut Bread and Lara Banana Bread, two very similar flavors.

What you need to know:

To start off – Clif is made with many organic ingredients, whereas Lara is not.

Nutritionally, the bars are quite similar – Clif weighs in at 69 grams and 240 calories, and Lara at 51 grams with 230 calories. Definitely not a 100 calorie snack. Clif sports 4 grams of fiber to Lara’s 5 grams. Sugarwise – 22 grams to Clif vs 20 to Lara (that’s about 5 teaspoons each!). We shall check the sugars’ source in a bit.

Clif does have 50% more protein than Lara – 9 grams vs 6 grams, but remember that most people do not suffer from lack of protein.

Here is Clif bar’s ingredient list:

Organic Brown Rice Syrup, ClifPro® (Soy Rice Crisps [Soy Protein Isolate, Rice Flour, Barley Malt Extract], Organic Roasted Soybeans, Organic Soy Flour), Walnuts, Organic Rolled Oats, Organic Toasted Oats (Organic Oats, Organic Evaporated Cane Juice), Organic Diced Bananas (Organic Bananas, Organic Rice Flour), Organic Evaporated Cane Juice, Chocolate Chips (Evaporated Cane Juice, Unsweetened Chocolate, Cocoa Butter, Soy Lecithin, Natural Flavors), ClifCrunch® (Organic Oat Fiber, Inulin [Chicory Extract], Organic Milled Flaxseed, Organic Oat Bran, Psyllium), Organic Banana Powder, Organic Soy Butter, Organic Date Paste, Natural Flavors, Sea Salt, Cinnamon.

And LaraBar:

Almonds, Dates, Unsweetened Bananas.

Clif has 29 (!) ingredients vs Lara’s 3. And the first one is sugar (Organic Brown Rice Syrup is just a fancy word for sugar, don’t be fooled). There are 3 more added sugars mentioned in Clif’s list (underlined), so you can be sure that most of the sweetness is not from the 26th ingredient, organic date paste. Lara goes to the other extreme – sourcing all its sweetness from dates and the bananas. Funny they write unsweetened bananas, we’ve not see sweetened bananas as an ingredient in other products. Bananas are simply very sweet, especially when a bit overripe.

Clif’s high protein count is again, not from a direct food, but rather soy protein isolate, a derivative of soybeans (note that here Clif is not using organic, so for organic fanatics – you’re probably getting GMO here).

Another irritating fact about the Clif bar is the addition of “Natural Flavors”. When the Clif founder Gary Erickson was mixing the first bars in his mom’s kitchen, there were no such additions, be assured. So what happened to the wholesome natural ingredients that they need to be fortified with a “natural flavor”?

In summary – looks like Larabar is the winner again.

We do have a lot of respect for Clif though. It is a small company run by a passionate founder and his wife, with a focus on organic and sustainable raw materials (recyclable packaging), exceptional employee benefits, etc… Now if they could just put together a simple bar…

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The healthy snackbar segment is huge and growing. It seems that manufacturers have figured out a way to dress up candy bars as healthy, and fill our craving for an anytime, anywhere treat. To be fair, there are many decent products out there, but some are not much more than glorified Snickers or Twix bars.

Let’s take a look at Kellogg’s Fiber Plus Dark Chocolate Almond Bar, which boasts 35% of the daily value of fiber and, as a comparison, Larabar’s Chocolate Coconut bar.

What you need to know:

We’ll begin by comparing some nutrients. The Fiber plus bar is rather small (36 grams) and  contains 130 calories. The Larabar is 40% bigger at 51 grams and has 84% more calories – 240.

On the fiber front, Kellogg’s wins hands down with 9 grams vs Larabar’s 5 grams. And sugar-wise it contains only 7 grams, vs 22 grams. That’s 2 teaspoons of sugar vs 5 and a half. Larabar does have 5 grams of protein vs only 2 grams for Kellogg’s.

So far it seems like Kellogg’s has the upper hand – less calories, less sugar, much more fiber. Just what the doctor ordered. Right?

Not so fast. Let’s have a peek under the hood shall we?

Here’s the ingredient list for fiber plus:

CHICORY ROOT FIBER, ROLLED OATS, CRISP RICE (RICE FLOUR, SUGAR, MALT EXTRACT, SALT, MIXED TOCOPHEROLS FOR FRESHNESS), SUGAR, ROASTED ALMONDS, INULIN FROM CHICORY ROOT, SEMISWEET CHOCOLATE DROPS (SUGAR, CHOCOLATE, COCOA BUTTER, DEXTROSE, MILK FAT, SOY LECITHIN, CONFECTIONER’S GLAZE [SHELLAC, HYDROGENATED COCONUT OIL]), VEGETABLE OIL (HYDROGENATED PALM KERNEL, COCONUT AND PALM OIL), FRUCTOSE, CANOLA OIL, CONTAINS TWO PERCENT OR LESS OF HONEY, CHOCOLATE, COCOA (PROCESSED WITH ALKALI), GLYCERIN, TRICALCIUM PHOSPHATE, WHEY, SALT, BAKING SODA, SOY LECITHIN, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SORBITAN MONOSTEARATE, POLYSORBATE 60, VITAMIN E ACETATE, GUM ARABIC, ZINC OXIDE, NONFAT DRY MILK, WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR, PARTIALLY DEFATTED PEANUT FLOUR, SOY PROTEIN ISOLATE, BHT (FOR FRESHNESS), XANTHAN GUM.

and for Larabar:

Dates, Almonds, Walnuts, Unsweetened Cocoa Powder, Unsweetened Coconut.

A whopping 54 Kellogg’s ingredients vs. 5 for Larabar. Even before reading through the ingredient list, one must ask herself, why does a bar need so many things inside?  Compare to 5 human readable ingredients from Larabar.

Here’s what happened with Kellogg’s: When your first and foremost ingredient is chicory root fiber, not a “food” people consume regularly, you have to make up for it with a long list of other stuff to make the product taste good. Four mentions of sugars, shellac (a bug extract), glycerin, soy lecithin, artificial flavors, natural flavors, BHT, polysorbates – who really needs all these? What about simple real food? Can’t Kellogg’s take a page from Larabar’s book?

Larabar’s ingredients help explain it’s high sugar content – from the dates.  Its fiber comes from the dates, almonds and walnuts. No wonder the calorie count is high either – it is both a larger bar and it contains nuts with fats, albeit good ones.

Too bad Larabar doesn’t come in a mini-size, about half the current bar, then it would be the hands down winner in this match-up, both from an ingredient perspective and a caloric one.

What to do at the supermarket:

Buying bars, be on the lookout for ingredient lists the length of a Stephen King novel. They tell the story of a highly processed product manufactured to tell a certain story about certain nutrients (in this case – fiber). Watch for the sugar content and whether it is added, or simply comes from the dried fruit in the bar.

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Did you know that for every dollar we Americans spend on food, about 50 cents go to grub consumed outside the home? That’s right, half of our eating money is spent in restaurants, fast food chains, coffee shops, airport and mall food courts, etc…

So even if you are vigilant at the supermarket about the foods you buy, eating out a lot can destroy your diet. The problems:

1. Much less information about what you are eating. There are usually no nutrition labels with detailed ingredient lists and nutrient breakdowns. True, more and more chains provide calorie counts for their meals, but the calories tell only a small part of the overall story. Sodium content, for example, does not appear in many cases.

2. Eating out is psychologically considered a treat, so many folks pay less attention to the nutritional aspects of their order. But this isn’t 1957 where a family would go out to celebrate a birthday at McDonald’s once in a few months. We’re talking about daily visits to fast food joints and other fine dining establishments. When you’re treated daily, it’s no longer a treat.

3. Some of the dishes served come with surprisingly huge amount of calories, fats, salt, and sugars. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has decided to award the 2010 XTREME EATING AWARDS to the top performers:

• California Pizza Kitchen Tostada Pizza with Grilled Steak. With 1,680 calories,1½ day’s worth (32 grams) of saturated fat, and more than 2 day’s worth (3,300 mg) of sodium ordering the single-serve pizza is like eating a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pepperoni Pizza topped with six Taco Bell Crunchy beef Tacos.
• P.F. Chang’s Double Pan-Fried Noodles Combo. You could eat 10 egg Rolls and not top the 1,820 calories in this dish. “They fry these noodles to make them hard and crunchy, while you end up soft and flabby,” says CSPI nutrition director Bonnie Liebman. If this noodle dish does indeed have the 7,690 milligrams of sodium to which the chain confesses, that would be about three teaspoons of salt—a five-day supply.
• The Cheesecake Factory Pasta Carbonara with Chicken. When CSPI first dubbed fettuccine Alfredo a “heart attack on a plate,” it was because CSPI’s lab tests found it had 1,500 calories and 48 grams of saturated fat. But, according to the company, this dish—with four cups of white-flour pasta, smoked bacon, chicken, and Parmesan cream and butter sauce—has 2,500 calories and more saturated fat (85 grams) than one should consume in four days. It’s like eating the chain’s onion-ring-topped Grilled Rib-Eye Steak with French Fries, and a slice of Tiramisu Cheesecake.
• more at CSPI…

What to do at the restaurant:

Try to figure out how many meals a week you spend outside the home. You’ll quickly realize that you need to keep your nutritional guard up when ordering your breakfast / lunch / dinner. Ask the waiter or proprietor for the healthy options. Dressings for entrees and salads can be provided on the side not drowning the food. Dishes can be shared. And drinks can be plain old water. Dessert is not a must. A good espresso should suffice…

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The organic and conventional food camps have another new study to argue over. This one is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

A “disappointingly small” number of well-designed studies have looked at whether organic foods may have health benefits beyond their conventional counterparts’ … Those trials showed no strong evidence that organic eating boosted antioxidant activity…. read more…

What are the facts, in one line? Not enough evidence, mostly as a result of not enough research.

What are the headlines we’ll be seeing: Organic is not healthier for you.

What you need to know: The reason people go for organic food has very little to do with the existence of more nutrients:

1. For many consumers, it’s the fear of the negative health effects of pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and genetic modification that drives them to organic.
2. Eco-conscious shoppers are concerned about the sustainability factor – organic farming methods help protect the environment and guarantee that next generations can enjoy clean air, clean water, and less poisonous chemicals wherever they go. Which brings us back to point number 1.
3. Taste – If you’ve bitten into a vine ripened heirloom tomato, chewed on a meat cut from a grass fed organically grown animal, or lightly salted a hard boiled organic egg with an intensely orange yolk, you know it’s hard to compare to the conventional fare sold at half price in the supermarket.

So whether future studies refute or prove the nutrition benefits of organics, there are plenty of existing reasons to opt in today. Especially if you can afford the price differential.

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Ever enterprising beverage marketers will persuade normally rational people to buy colored sugar water for personal consumption, convincing them that said liquid is gloriously rich in health benefits and in some cases also uber-hip.

Vitamin Water XXX is a classic example. Named for its “triple antioxidants” formula of acai, blueberry, and pomegranate flavors, the xxx signage has additional connotations.

Never mind that this “water” contains no juice,

it has the power of triple antioxidants to help keep you healthy and fight free radicals…and it has never been seen live or nude, but it is definitely au naturel.

Oh, by the way:

Contains less than 1% juice.

Unfortunately for consumers who ignore this marketing drivel, the marketing efforts continue into the last bastion of FDA regulated information – the nutrition facts panel and the ingredient list – hoping to gain a more and more sympathy points for a products nobody really needs.

This is what the ingredient list should read:

water, sugar, colors, needless vitamins & minerals

Here is the actual ingredient list:

Reverse Osmosis Water, Cane Sugar, Crystalline Fructose, Citric Acid, Vegetable Juice (Color), Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Natural Flavor, Berry and Fruit Extracts (Acai, Blueberry, Pomegranate and Apple), Magnesium Mate (Electrolyte), Calcium Lactate (Electrolyte), Monopotassium Phosphate (Electrolyte), Niacin (B3), Pantothenic Acid (B5), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (B6), Cyanocobalamin (B12)

Note how the ingredient names are aimed to get you hyped about the chic and vitality of the product.

It’s not just any water being provided to you – it’s “reverse osmosis” water, whatever that means. Probably better than regular water, right?

Next up – the sugar. Not just any sugar – it’s “cane” sugar. Duh. Sugar comes from beets or sugar cane. Someone must have decided that cane sugar sounds more sophisticated or healthy. Baloney.

Crystalline Fructose also sounds cool. Admit it. But it’s simply another form of sugar, derived from corn. Kind of like high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) on steroids, as it is 98% fructose.

In other interesting product features, the deep reddish color comes not from the XXX blend, but from vegetable juice (most likely beets). Oh well, at least it’s not artificial coloring…

And if you think the XXX berry scent and flavor is from the triumvirate acai, blueberry, and pomegranate, please note that they appear AFTER the “Natural Flavor” in the ingredient list. Rest assured that a laboratory has perfected the right combination of natural chemicals to excite your olfactory sensors and taste glands. It’s probably not the berry blend.

The list ends with a cacophony of vitamins and electrolytes that our bodies get enough of from other sources. So we’re back to the basics – water, sugar, colors.

To its credit, VWXXX has got half the amount of sugar per cup as Coke does.  But a single serve bottle contains 8 teaspoons of needless, useless sugar, at 125 calories.

Sorry to ruin yet another marketing narrative.

What to do at the supermarket:

Get your anti-oxidants from real fruit, not sugar water. Skip the supermarket beverage aisle and stick with tap water. With the money saved you’ll be able to afford all the tasty healthy fruits you desire.

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It seems like soda tax propositions are popping up like mushrooms after spring showers across the country. And everywhere they do, the beverage industry is there, like a wild boar, ready to stomp them down.

Last week, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter wanted to raise $77 million annually from a tax on sugary soft drinks. A local bottler and multimillionaire offered a bribe donation of $10M to help promote health and recreation programs in the next 2 years. City council shot down the tax regardless.

And now the Washington DC city council is proposing a 1 cent tax per fluid ounce. CalorieLab tells of the novel approach by the American Beverage Association:

the “grassroots” tactic adopted by the beverage industry: Recruiting local businesses to be the public face of their campaign. Expect to see this become a standard play by Big Soda wherever the soda tax rears its head. Ed & Betty’s Corner Grocery gets a lot more sympathy in the average household … [rather] than Pepsico, Inc.

In all likelihood, this proposed tax will not make it. Consumer sentiment is already against paying more for anything.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that sugary drinks are a top contributor to our nation’s obesity epidemic. The beverage industry has externalized all the health related costs in order to bring consumers a “cheap” drink.

(Cheap is relative though. Tap water is much cheaper than soda. And healthier too.)

So how to get the beverage industry to shoulder the responsibility? It’s a major challenge. We have suggested in the past the implementation of a calorie offset solution, but there could be other ways to reduce the financial incentive of manufacturing sugary drinks, and shifting efforts by industry towards other areas.

What to do at the supermarket:

Skip the beverage aisles. A family of 4 can save $500 a year by switching from soft drinks to tap water. And several pounds per person. Not to mention the number of plastic bottles not contaminating landfills.

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Not all red meats are created equal. Better phrased – not all red meats affect our health equally. These are the findings published recently in Circulation, the scholarly journal of the American Heart Association.

Turns out that processed meats are far more likely to increase your chances of diabetes and heart disease, when compared to unprocessed. The study, a meta-analysis of previous research efforts, specifically bifurcated meats to 2 categories – unprocessed and processed.

Eating unprocessed beef, pork or lamb appeared not to raise risks of heart attacks and diabetes … suggesting that salt and chemical preservatives may be the real cause of these two health problems associated with eating meat.

… on average, each 1.8 oz (50 grams) daily serving of processed meat a day — one to two slices of deli meats or one hot dog — was associated with a 42 percent higher risk of heart disease and a 19 percent higher risk of developing diabetes.

“To lower risk of heart attacks and diabetes, people should consider which types of meats they are eating,” said Renata Micha of the Harvard School of Public Health. Read more…

So T-bone steak – yes. Hot dog – no. Chuck roast – yes. Bologna – no.

What you need to know:

This is a very interesting finding. Although the two groups of meat were similar in saturated fats, the ingredients that may cause the different health outcomes were the additives. The study found that processed meats contained, on average, four times more sodium and 50% more nitrate preservatives than unprocessed meats.

The American Meat Institute rejected the findings, stating that one study is not sufficient to draw conclusions.

What to do at the supermarket:

Although processed meats are very convenient, they contain many ingredients that are not good for you. Best to buy lean cuts of meat that you can prepare at home. Or consider other healthy alternatives – fish, poultry and legumes.

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A study published in the May 12 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, provides an alarming statistic:

...[a] research team surveyed 5,300 households in 2008 and discovered that 1.4% of children were thought to have peanut allergies, more than three times the 0.4% rate found when a similar tally was taken in 1997.

The study says the percentage of children with allergies to peanuts or tree nuts soared to 2.1% in 2008 from 0.6% in 1997, while remaining at 1.3% for adults. Read more at WebMD…

Parents to young kids with allergies live in a constant state of fear. Hearing that their numbers are growing is sad. What can explain this sharp rise in such a short time?

1. No real rise – There may not have been such a sharp rise, just a much higher awareness among parents to the possibility that their child may be allergic to something. Though some kids are so sensitive to peanuts that even a tiny amount can trigger a life threatening reaction, many milder reactions can include a runny nose, itching, or diarrhea. Some parents may misinterpret symptoms as an allergy when the real culprit is something else.

2. Hygiene theory – we are so clean these days – at home, at play.  Antibiotics are everywhere. Everything is disinfected. Young bodies don’t get a chance to develop strong immune systems.

3. Peanut processing changes. Perhaps the roasting affects the nuts in some way. This seems illogical because peanuts have been roasted for years.

4. Genetic modification. In the UK in 1999, peanut allergies among kids shot up 50% in one year. It was the same year that genetically modified soy was introduced to the country. Soy and peanuts are legume cousins. Could this somehow be related?

What to do at the supermarket:

If your family is lucky to be part of the 98.6% who don’t suffer from peanut allergies, they are actually a great and healthy food for kids. The problem with many peanut butters is that they have added oil and sugar in heaps. Look for peanut butter containing just peanuts.

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