NOT BUYING IT

A recent New York Times article discusses "functional foods" --- the lastest marketing term for foods being promoted as providing health benefits. Economists call them "credence foods", with good reason ---  all this expensive marketing and branding is meant to make health-concious consumers believe that this particular food not only tastes good, but has special health benefits. And we're all familiar with these claims. Quaker Oats helps lower your cholesterol! Kellogg's Rice Krispies helps support immunity! Frosted Mini-Wheats will make your kid more attentive in class! Think Jamie Lee Curtis and her Activia "probiotic yogurt" ads.

As the Times article and others explain, Dannon has come under fire on more than one occasion for overstating their claims of Activia's benefits; and last December agreed to a settlement with the FTC over charges of deceptive advertising. Other food giants such as Kellogg's and Nestle's have also come under fire in recent years. The FTC found that Kellogg's was making unsubstantiated and misleading claims by stating that Rice Krispies "now helps support your child's immunity" and "has been improved to include antioxidants and nutrients that your family needs to help them stay healthy", and also with Kellogg's claims that Frosted Mini-Wheats improved children's attentiveness by nearly 20%. (It turns out that the study upon which this claim was based involved feeding one group of subjects Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast, and the other nothing but water).

Healthy eating is under attack by big business, and consumers have to be more careful than ever. There is simply no substitute for reading labels and understanding nutrition. We cannot afford to hand our health over to the companies that stand to make big profits off of us! Let's just take a look at some of these health claims.

Oats are indeed good for you. 3 grams of soluable fiber a day help significantly lower cholesterol in individuals with high cholesterol, and eating high fiber foods has been shown to lower risk of heart disease. Other studies have shown that oats have special antioxidants; that they can help improve immunity, lower risk of Type 2 diabetes, stabilize blood sugar, and lower risk of breast cancer. (Whole grains in general provide these benefits). But know what you're getting! The much-touted McDonald's oatmeal has 21 ingredients, including modified food starch, caramel color, preservatives and additives, and according to food critic  Mark Bittman,"... has about the same amount of sugar as a Snickers bar, has about the same amount of calories as one of their hamburgers...".

A packet of plain Quaker's Instant Oats contains : WHOLE GRAIN ROLLED OATS, OAT FLOUR, CALCIUM CARBONATE, SALT, GUAR GUM, CARAMEL COLOR, REDUCED IRON, VITAMIN A PALMITATE. It's 100 calories for a 28 g serving, and contains no sugar, so additivies and nonorganic status aside, it's a good nutritional value, especially if you get your sugar from added natural fruits and keep the fat low by using skim milk (or skipping milk entirely).

My current instant oatmeal of choice is Three Sisters' Plain Grain or Dark Chocolate. It has no artificial ingredients of any kind, and although it's not organic (boo!) the company is green and socially conscious, which matters to a hippie like me. I put a little fresh fruit or dried cranberries on mine, and skip the milk. The main thing is, you want to skip the artificial ingredients and added sugar and fat. By choosing a good, plain brand and making oatmeal at home, you can control how much sugar and fat you add as well as the sources of that sugar and fat. Plus, it's cheaper!

I'll skip reviews of Rice Krispies and Frosted Mini-Wheats, neither of which have the slightest appeal to me as a foodstuff, although I will say that in researching this post, I visited the Rice Krispies website. The first thing that popped up was a cute cartoon character pointing to pictures of Rice Krispie Treats, touted as "gluten-free treats!" Well and good, but gluten-free is not code for "healthy". There's a lot of sugar and fat in those treats. And some sugar and fat is ok, as long as you know what and how much you're eating, and understand that a Rice Krispie treat isn't any better for you, nutritionally speaking, than a cookie.

I don't eat a lot of cereal because I prefer to get my carbs other ways, and unless it's whole grain, cereal is a processed food. I full admit and confess to loving Barbara's Bakery products, especially the Shredded Oats Original, but these days I eat them more as a snack than a meal, and even then, I have to be really careful because 1) they're addictive and 2) they're still processed carbs.

But let's move on to yogurt, because those Activia ads have pissed me off for a long time.It's touted as  "probiotic". Well, all yogurts are probiotic. They contain a certain amount of beneficial micro-organisms that aid in digestion. Any yogurt containing live cultures like lactobacillus acidophilus and streptococcus thermophilis is probiotic.Maybe Activia and other probitic brands have a little more, I don't know. I do know that the longer it stays on the shelf, the less effective the probiotics become, which is a good reason to just make it yourself.

There's no question that yogurt is a wonderful healthy food, and when I started out my weight loss project, I ate a bowl of homemade nonfat Greek style yogurt every single day. Yogurt is really easy to make, and it's a whole lot cheaper to make than to buy. And if you don't want to go to the trouble of making it, but you want the thicker Greek style (or yogurt cheese, which is also really good!) you can buy plain, nonfat organic yogurt and just strain it through a cheesecloth bag until it's your desired consistency.

Processed foods, big brand names, fast food --- they're popular for a reason, and that reason is that they are convenient, and relatively cheap. But make no mistake --- you pay for the convenience and savings in other ways. You pay through damage to the environment due to the manner in which big agro raises, harvests,  ships,  processes,and markets its crops. You pay with your health in the long run when you consume artificial ingredients, genetically modified foods, low quality foods, foods which may not contain the benefits and nutritional value that those who are profiting off you would have you believe.

I'm not buying it.

The only answer is to take ownership of your own health. Don't have time to do a lot of reading? It's simple: out of the (let's say) 21 meals and 14 snacks you eat each week, make it a goal for 16-18 of those meals and 8-10 of those snacks to be simple foods, as close to the way they originated as possible. You'll be healthier, wealthier, and probably skinnier.

Now that's a bargain.

 

Comments

[Cindy]

E, there is an interesting discussion about this very topic in Dr. David A. Kesseler's excellent book, The End of Overeating (I can't recommend it enough). He says something to the effect that treats used to be just that --- a special goodie that you only had every once in a while. An ice cream cone, a dinner out --- these were special occasions. But now, Americans in particular expect EVERY meal to be something special. We have treats all the time.

I know this to be true of myself --- it was more true when I was fat, and I have been able to rewire it to some degree, but it really takes a lot of attention and maintenance. It is SO easy to slip back into that "treat" mentality!

[ecloudy]

Good for your body food really is simple, isn't it. Oatmeal, chard, apples, some meat or fish. Nowadays though I keep thinking that we have all become so caught up in all the choices that we have, that plain old eating is somewhat seen as lazy, it is supposed to be almost some sort of performance that is true be memorable. You can't put the genie back in the bottle though, none of us would want to live back in a place where our eating choices were severely limited to plain, uninteresting food. So how to balance the the pleasure food gives us with the minimal needs for energy that the body requires. So enjoy your blog, you are on my list to check daily.