More on Deceptive Labeling and Marketing of Food

Many people have become aware that whole grains in our food have various health benefits. But you need to read labels: some foods that may claim "whole grain" on the label are only partly whole grain, and the whole grain may not be the majority of the grain in that product. You need to read the ingredients list on the label, keeping in mind that ingredients are listed in the order of their quantity (that is, the ingredient used in the biggest amount is listed first, etc.).

Also, keep in mind that "multi-grain" is not a benefit unless those grains are whole. Five or six or eight or ten grains, if none of them are whole, would be less beneficial than just wheat, if that wheat is whole.

A bread store that I know of was making and selling a rather tasty bread. The ingredients list included "HFCS." What is that? you might wonder. High fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup, possibly wrongly, has gotten a bad wrap. It looks like the bread store was deliberately attempting to conceal from customers what was in its bread, especially considering that high fructose corn syrup is not usually known as "HFCS" and thus customers might not immediately recognize that ingredient from the abbreviation.

Many health-conscious food buyers believe that sugar should be avoided. So I see, as an ingredient, "evaporated cane juice," or "evaporated cane juice crystals." Anyone who knows how ordinary cane sugar is made should understand that "evaporated cane juice" is simply cane sugar—no more and no less. Someone has just tried to call it by a name that won't raise the red flag for customers that the term "sugar" would.

Besides such attempts at less-than-honest labeling of ingredients, labels contain many misleading claims. Cheerios will lower your cholesterol—if you eat it three times a day for weeks on end. I personally don't like monotony in my food and would not be able to stand eating the same cereal even once a day, every day.

And there's a yogurt that is supposed to be beneficial to your digestive tract. Again, if you heed the fine print, you've got to eat it three times a day to reap the benefit.

And many foods, like energy bars, power bars, Vitamin Water, etc., are simply useless and will not deliver the claimed benefits. Many products fortified with vitamins don't have enough of some or all of the vitamins that are in them. If you are concerned about your vitamin intake, it's much wiser to take a multivitamin pill every day. Many of those will deliver the "daily value" of most of the vitamins that they contain. (If you take a multivitamin, you may want to avoid breakfast cereals that have added vitamins; there's such a thing as too much of some vitamins, and you may risk taking in too much.)

Just one more word of caution. Many of the products that tout their fiber content achieve the fiber numbers by adding substances like inulin, which are considered "isolated fiber." These substances are believed by many to not carry the benefits of natural fiber like that found in products like whole grains and unaltered fruits and vegetables. So-- get your fiber from grains and produce, not from yogurt. Oh, and don't fall for the term "natural" on labels. Natural is a term that's not regulated, so it's basically meaningless. And it certainly does not have to equal "beneficial" or even "harmless." Consider that snake venom and poison mushrooms are "natural."

Update, September 15, 2011
Here's an article on health claims for some food products that have been given various additives.
http://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-and-nutrition-pictures/6-snack-foods-that-make-health-claims.aspx#/slide-1

Update, October 14, 2011
Here is another article which says that labeling (of cereals, in this case) as "natural" is meaningless. And it mentions Kashi being bought by Kellog, which I mentioned in an earlier post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/14/natural-cereal_n_1011113.html
There are two things in this article that I don't agree with. First, they like Frosted Flakes for having vitamins added. I, for one, don't want vitamins added to my cereal because (1) I take a multivitamin/mineral tablet and taking in vitamins added to my cereal might mean I'm getting too much of something; and (2) I prefer the supplement tablet to vitamins and minerals added to my cereal because I can better control what I'm taking in, and there are more vitamins and minerals in my supplement tablet.
Second, cereals becoming organic might be beneficial to the environment but I don't think it would make my breakfast cereal healthier. I advocate eating things like plain old oatmeal--which can be bought cheaply, is quick to cook (maybe 1.5 min), and is as simple and healthy as it gets. Note: NO added anything, unless I choose to add something (which I do, sometimes: raisins--definitely a plus from the taste standpoint and perfectly healthy--and maybe cinnamon).

Update, October 19, 2011
Here's a quote from a comment on food which is not as healthy as the consumer might be led to believe:

[W]hy do we need a website to track this kind of news [about sugar]? It goes way beyond sugar. Take blueberries, for example. Food Identity Theft inspected the labels of Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats Blueberry Muffin Cereal, Kellogg's Special K Blueberry Cereal, General Mill's [sic] Total Blueberry Pomegranate Cereal, Betty Crocker Blueberry Muffin Mix and Smucker's Snack 'n Waffles Blueberry. Despite their names, the site found that the only blueberries in the mix are "blueberry flavored crunchelets" (sugar and blue #2 lake food dye) and "blueberry bits" (red #40 lake and blue #2 lake food dye), among other pseudo-berry flavors. ["Lake" is a term in dyeing.]

Update, April 30, 2012
The latest issue of Nutrition Action HealthLetter, published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, has (1) an evaluation of cold cereals; and (2) an article that discusses the mechanisms in our brain whereby gratifying foods--for example those with considerable sugar or fat content, that is, "manufactured" foods--actually are addictive very much like illicit drugs.
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Corporations Make Healthy Eating Choices Very Difficult

It's often been pointed out—including by me—that the large purveyors of fast food serve unhealthy food—high in fat, calories, and sodium—and thus bear some of the blame for the epidemic of obesity in America and increasingly in other countries as well, as we are exporting our obesity along with our culture and our food.

However, there is a sense in which they should not get the chief blame. With their triple cheeseburgers, they are giving the public what they want. Many people are not health-conscious or do not have the knowledge to make health-conscious decisions about what they eat. Or, other considerations may trump any issues of good nutrition.

But, there are many people who try to eat healthy; and often these people are not well-served by the corporations who make and sell our food.

There is a lot of misleading marketing of food. Many products like nutritional supplements make unsubstantiated claims. (These claims are not adequately regulated by the government; the labels must merely carry a fine-print statement saying, "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.")

Many products like energy drinks, energy bars, "power bars," and so forth are worthless. Many products that boast their fiber content contain so-called isolated fiber, which may not have the health benefits of natural fiber.

Many products made to sound healthy are full of unnatural and processed ingredients. For example, not yogurt but "yogurt powder"; not fruit but some concoction that's starch, sugar and coloring, with maybe a little fruit juice.

Some examples: According to the magazine Nutrition Action Health Letter, published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (the people who have made in-the-news exposés of movie-theater popcorn and so forth), the following products, which are pitched to those seeking gluten-free foods, may not be truly healthful:

• Glutino Gluten Free Blueberry Breakfast Bars, which are "junk" because their "blueberry filling" has more sugar, apple powder, white grape juice concentrate, and water than blueberries.
• Glutino "gluten-free pretzels coated with premium yogurt" are largely made of corn starch and potato starch; the yogurt coating contains yogurt listed as last among its ingredients, meaning that, by quantity, it's the smallest of the ingredients in the yogurt coating.
• Food Should Taste Good Sweet Potato All Natural Chips contain more corn and corn oil than sweet potato. And some "veggie chips" have more salt than some of the veggie-derived ingredients.

Brands, and stores, who might try to make us think they deal in healthy food, often are doing quite the opposite. The so-called "health food supermarkets" deal in food that is high in sodium. They have bakery departments that sell us concoctions of sugar and fat (though no canny consumer truly expects these things to be healthy).

So it's very much a case of "let the buyer beware." More and more of us these days eat more and more food that we do not prepare from scratch but is served to us or it comes in a package. And even those who want to eat healthy often have an almost impossible job when making their food-buying choices.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Should You Listen to Food Gurus?

There's a lot of advice on food and eating and nutrition, these days: on the Internet, on TV, in magazines and books. A lot of it is mainstream, is well-established and backed by medical research, and has been around for a while. This type of stuff is what I think we should be paying attention to.

Some other sorts of advice are a challenge to the intelligent and well-informed consumer. It's not always obvious when we really should ignore what we're being told, either because the person giving the advice is not disinterested (meaning he stands to gain financially, either by blatantly selling you something, or more subtlety, he may be advocating a product such as a supplement that's made by a company he owns); or because it's a bit extreme and not practical for most of us. Or even simply nonsensical. (Note: Just because something is recommended as "natural," that should not automatically recommend it. Remember, poisonous mushroom are "natural." Snake venom is "natural.")

So, what are some examples of what we ought to be listening to? Well, the government tells us to reduce the sodium (salt) and fat in our diets (particularly, avoid trans fat and cut saturated fat). And eat more whole grains and fruits and vegetables.

Okay, that's all very sound advice. It should guide our shopping and make us eat less fast food. (Read those nutrition labels!) Even the big food processors have begun to adjust their products to be healthier in these respects.

But one person—I think I heard this on TV—said, "Don't eat anything with a label on it." Okay, it would be nice if we ate more stuff made from scratch, so we could avoid chemical ingredients like artificial colors and flavors and so forth. But this is not going to be practical for most people. With many wives and mothers having careers outside of the home, the trend has been for more and more of what we eat to come ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat. That trend has its downside, I'm sure, but that guy is definitely spitting into the wind.

I don't know how far that guy's dictum was meant to be carried. Does he mean to include things like eggs, milk, and even produce from the supermarket, that has those little adhesive labels on it? It's probably true that we'd get more nutritious eggs if we kept our own chickens and let them wander around. And we'd get tomatoes that would taste better (and might or might not be more nourishing) if we grew our own.

But isn't that a bit extreme for the majority of Americans who are urban or suburban? Do I need to avoid buying yogurt, and make my own? Even if I said, Okay, I'll make my own yogurt (actually, no way), then where would the milk come from? If not from a bottle or carton with a label, then I'd have to keep my own cow, right? I'm pretty sure cows, or even chickens, are not allowed by my condo homeowners' association.

One or two little asides: First, some people think that sea salt is better, or less unhealthful, than regular salt. This is simply untrue. With the very minor exception that sea salt contains very small amounts of some of the minerals found in sea water, it's still just salt: it's very close to 100% sodium chloride, which is what ordinary salt is.

Second, many people try to avoid sugar, and doing so may be a good thing--but that would be another subject. Fact is, they're too easily tricked by the food makers. I recently saw, as a food ingredient, "evaporated sugar cane juice crystals." Hey, if you know how sugar is made, that translates into nothing more nor less than ordinary sugar! Add that to my comments, in other postings, on deceiving the consumer!

Third, a common sweetener--so ubiquitous as to be unavoidable in store-bought food--is high fructose corn syrup. It's gotten a bad rap, but most likely it's not bad for you. It contains two kinds of sugars which are both naturally found in food; so it's no worse than any sugar.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Soup for People into Healthy Eating

I eat a lot of soup; can't keep myself supplied with it. But since I became concerned about the BPA that is in cans, including soup cans, I've been buying only soup in boxes (and occasionally those little one-serving cups where you add water and microwave them). Also, I won't buy any soup that's high in sodium--which excludes probably about 90% of soup, both in cans and boxes.

One brand that seems to have appeared recently is called FIG Food Company. I just had their lentil soup, which I thought was pretty good. I also had their Tuscan White Bean soup, but that one I found rather pretty bland.

These come in little boxes (two servings) for about $3. A similar one is Dr. McDougal's. Some of their soups are pretty good, and some are bland. You've got to sample them and see which ones you like.

Since low-sodium soups can be a bit bland or even cardboard-y, I often add some of my own herbs or spices, and that makes a very worthwhile improvement. For example, cumin for the lentil soup, basil for anything tomato-y, curry powder sometimes, pepper in almost anything. Maybe a little Tobasco.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Richard Stein