Be Skeptical of Food Products Selling "Healthy"

If a food has to tell you it’s healthy, it probably isn’t healthy.

When shopping for healthy foods, it’s easy to be seduced by health claims and nutrient claims on food packages. Claims such as “low fat”, “contains 90 calories” or “high in fiber” are what the FDA calls nutrient content claims (1). The FDA regulates these claims in an attempt to prevent manufacturers from misleading consumers, yet nutrient claims and other packaging terms can be very deceptive.

Let’s take a look at the terms used on Fruit & Grain Cereal Bars.

This product is selling health with the terms:

• Fruit
  
• Grain
• Blueberry
• 2 grams of fiber
• Naturally
• 140 calories
• 0.5 grams sat fat
• 85 mg sodium

In addition, there are pictures of whole blueberries on the product cover and a whole wheat plant. Both imply whole food and health.

This is classic nutritional doublethink because it’s easy to look at the cookie-like bar with a jelly filling and know, intuitively, that this is not a healthy food. In addition, for a food to be considered a good source of fiber, it needs to have at least 2.5 grams of fiber per serving (2). This product has 2 grams of fiber per serving, which means it is not a good source of fiber.

Cereal bar ingredient list

The very first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup. There are 56 other ingredients in this product. Let’s take a look at the first seven ingredients in the filling,

• Cereal bar ingredients: high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, water, blueberry puree concentrate, sugar, glycerin and maltodextrin.
• Ingredient translation: sugar, sugar, water, sugar, sugar, food additive and a food additive which quickly digests to sugar.

If we follow Michael Pollan’s Food Rules (3), products like this violate rules 4, 5 and 6.

#4: Avoid food products that contain high fructose corn syrup

• High fructose corn syrup is the first ingredient.

#5: Avoid foods that have some form of sugar listed among the top three ingredients

• Four out of the first 5 ingredients are sugar.

#6: Avoid foods products that contain more than 5 ingredients

• This product has 57 ingredients and 4 of the first 5 are sugar.

A whole food doesn’t need to tell you it’s healthy. A whole food won’t make any nutrient claims or health claims. With every step of processing, a food loses nutrients and gains food additives.

Be skeptical of food products trying to sell health.

---

---

References

1. §101.13   Nutrient content claims—general principles. PART 101—FOOD LABELING. Title 21: Food and Drugs. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. US Government Publishing Office. http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=1&SID=4bf49f997b04dcacdfbd637db9aa5839&ty=HTML&h=L&mc=true&n=pt21.2.101&r=PART#se21.2.101_113.  Current as of April 12, 2016. Last accessed April 14, 2016.
   
2. Dietary Reference Intakes: Macronutrients.Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids. National Academy of Science. Released September 5, 2002.http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/Nutrition/DRIs/DRI_Macronutrients.pdf. Last access April 14, 2016.
3. Pollan M. Part I: What Should I Eat. In: Food Rules. An Eater’s Manual. New York, NY. Penguin Books: 2009.
4. Images taken and modified by Christine Dobrowolski for review purposes.