Some GREAT Consumer Product Info

According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, consumers need to beware of food companies trying to snag customers by making food sound healthy.  Consumers need to put on their thinking caps and inquisitive eyes!  Many new foods craft the image of healthiness:  it’s a lot  smoke and mirrors.

• Enjoy Life Plentils Lentil Chips:  They sound healthy because “lentils” are healthy (containing plant-based protein and a good source of fiber).  Not so fast!  They are made of lentil powder, potato starch, oil, salt, and turmeric.  A one ounce serving has 130 calories, 3 grams of protein and only 1 gram of fiber.  Eating these gets you one more gram of protein and fiber than if you ate potato or corn chips.  They are higher in sodium than Lays Classic Potato Chips and Tostitos Original Tortilla Chips.
• Nabisco’s belVita Chocolate Breakfast Biscuits:  “Power up”?  They claim to contain 19g whole grain and to have energy-releasing B-vitamins.  Stop right there!  The whole grains are healthy, but 20% of belVita’s grains are refined.  Calorie-for-calorie, they have 1/2 the sugar of an Oreo.  Nabisco does not claim health in these, they claim a “new kind of breakfast”.  The B-vitamin claim is incorrect!  B-vitamins do not make you feel more energetic.  Thebiscuits are not a good source of protein with 3-4grams per serving.  These biscuits are an okay choice if you are having them with 2 foods from 2 different food groups (yogurt, milk, fruit, eggs, etc.)
• Ronzoni Garden Delight Pasta Boxes:  “With a Half Serving of Vegetables per 2oz Portion.”  Hmmmmmm…..  No.  It’s a quarter cup of “vegetable solids” from dried carrot, tomato, and spinach.  The 2oz serving has about the equivalent of one sixtieth of a carrot or 3 spinach leaves.  Mueller’s Hidden Veggie pastas are worse.  Their dried veggie source is corn, with 1/2 the Vitamin A of the Ronzoni product.  The bottom line is that Veggie pastas are made mostly  from white flour and pale in comparison to eating vegetables.
• Bolthouse Farms Protein Plus Shakes (owned by Campbell Soup!):  Their extra protein comes from soy protein isolate and whey protein concentrate.  There are 800 calories per bottle with 64gm of protein.  64gm of protein can be easily found in a well-balanced diet of 2-3oz meat servings plus 2-8oz glasses of skim milk.  Mango Protein Plus bottle claims to contain nutrients to metabolize protein and fat for energy and offer lean muscle nourishment.  It also claims to be essential for the immune system.  There’s actually no evidence that this is true.  In both cases, the average adult is looking to get fruits and veggies from food and to shoot for 20 grams of protein per meal from food
• KIND Plus Pomegranate:  Claims to prevent weight gain.  Studies were done to prove this wrong, and they did!  KIND Plus bars also claim to maintain the immune system and healthy skin:  this is also unfounded unless you’re malnourished to begin with.  The nutrition in these bars are as easily found in food:  apples, oranges, Greek yogurt, etc.
• Girl Scout Cookies:  They are trying to change what they sell in the midst of the obesity epidemic.  Their faux healthy cookie:  Mango Cremes with Nutrifusion are made with refined sugar and oil in the same proportion as most other cookies.  Their ingredient:  palm oil, gives them twice the saturated fat of Oreos.  The Girl Scouts are using fool tactics to sell these!
• Post Honey Bunches of Oats Greek Honey Crunch:  The yogurt is YOGURT POWDER!  It is heat treated, which kills the yogurt cultures and the protein.  Rickland Orchards Greek Yogurt Bars are made with a “Greek yogurt coating” that has more sugar, palm kernel oil, palm oil, and shea oil than Greek yogurt.  In both cases, the protein is coming from isolated soy protein and skim milk powder:  not from yogurt!

Remember:  claims are generally marketing ploys to get you to buy things.  Look deep and be educated!  Eat “real food” whenever possible.  Real food gives real nutrients

 

“Fooled by Food”: Monday morning on Tuesday, the Conclusion

The exciting finale  from the article published in April, 2013 by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.  Professor Wansink of Cornell University was interviewed by CSPI.

When last you visited us, the focus was on “What… makes people happy with fewer calories?’.  The focus was home.  Here are additional arenas and strategies (home is addressed here too!) to keep you ahead of being fooled.

• Fast Food Restaurants:  A study was done where the results showed that when people ate at a fast food restaurant, in soft light, they ate eighteen percent fewer calories and they rated the food more appealing.  The reason:  It is hypothesized that since they stayed in the restaurant (during the study) 9 minutes longer with the changed ambiance, they were more relaxed and they ate more slowly.  Their satiety cues caught up given more time:  perhaps they realized their fullness & stopped eating.  Additionally, the food may have become cold and less appealing (french fries in a fast food joint) so they stopped eating.  The people may have had enough.  This works at home too.  The more relaxed the environment, the more relaxed you are, you eat more slowly, and you end up eating less (use quiet music, low TV sound, candlelight, etc.)
• Sit Down Restaurants:  Usually people spend more time in sit down restaurants than in fast food places.  Interestingly, according to Professor Wansink’s book:  “Slim by Design”, thinner people sit near windows and in lighter, well-traveled parts of the restaurant.  Heavier people sit near the TV, bar, and in dark corners.  In these spots, they spend more time, which may explain why they are over eating.

Bottom line:  Be as relaxed as you can in your eating environment, focusing on eating, i.e. your speed & quantity ingested (also ENJOYING!).  Try to sit in the open when you are out at a sit down place.  You probably won’t find low light/quietness at McDonald’s, so eat slowly & enjoy & pay attention to your body’s cues 😉

• Stress!  For college students, it was found that they generally eat healthier when they arrive on campus.  As the year goes on, they slowly begin eating less healthy.  It is, in part, because of final exams.  More than that, though,  it is because of the overload of papers and projects throughout the entire year.  In similar observations of stress with non-college students, i.e. holidays, it was found that people stress eat because of the apprehension of having family visit, having to buy presents, having to finish projects.

Bottom line:  Be aware!  Discover stress relief that does not involve eating.  Try:  yoga, meditation, “Am I really hungry?”, keep a food diary, get support from the people around you, take a walk, watch a movie, listen to music, surf the internet, call a friend, don’t keep unhealthy food in the house/near you (go out and have them as a treat), make set-backs turn into positive experiences…..

 

• Keeping food on your desk.  Don’t do it (common sense)!  People who have a bowl of chocolate sitting on their desk eat about 125 more calories per day than if the chocolate is just six feet away.

 

• Grocery Shopping.  Studies have shown that people really do NOT buy more when you grocery shop hungry.  BUT they buy fewer healthy foods, and more convenient, highly processed food that they can eat quickly (breakfast cereals, frozen food, Hamburger Helper, candy, and crackers).  They stay away from fruits, vegetables, and healthy dairy.  The mere thought of how long it would be before they would be able to eat a chicken/vegetable stir-fry sways them to buy the fast, convenient, generally higher calorie/fat/sodium/sugar foods.

Want to know more?  Professor Wansink has a new book:  “Slim by Design:  Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life”.  The premise:  80% of the food we buy is within ~3 miles of where we live (food radius).  Choose the 5 places that cause you to overeat (they can be home and work along with the grocery store or a restaurant).  Make small changes in each of these places.  You can become slim by design!

And the last word on this series….  There is now a Slim by Design Global Registry:  www.SlimByDesign.org  It registers people who have been slim all of their lives.  By studying the habits, patterns, tips, and attitudes of these people, their goal is to help others learn some secrets and insights they have used to stay slim.  Use it as a resource!

“Fooled by Food”: episode 2

Yesterday the series began.  Information comes directly from CSPI’s April, 2013 edition….

Professor Brian Wansink from Cornell University exposes us to how to avoid being “Fooled by Food”.

• When we choose the “small” size of food/fluid we do not eat less!  The example Wansink offers is as follows.  A person has 2 packages of cookies that are each 20oz.  The first is labeled “small” the second, “medium”.  The person who gets the bag labeled “small” will think that, “Since it’s small, I can eat a lot.  The bag says small, so I’m not overindulging”.  The same package, labeled “medium” or “large” will have less eaten from it.
• Studies show that people actually prefer MEDIUM sizes.  It’s known as the “Golden Mean”.  Here’s how Wansink describes it working:  “If McDonald’s wants people to buy more 12oz soft drinks, they should introduce a new 8oz “small”.  People would then choose the 12oz “medium” more often because they tend to shy away from extreme sizes on either end.
• People do NOT prefer a larger size for value.  Even if all drink sizes cost the same amount of money, 60% will get either a “medium” or a “small”:  most get “medium”.  It is expected that people will take everything that they can get for free.  They don’t.

Next time….  Applying this to home, & more!

Fooled By Food: The Series….

“Nutrition Action”, published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest offers FANTASTIC information for consumers.  (You too can subscribe to their news letter:  http://www.cspinet.org)

In their April, 2013 edition, the cover article was:  “Fooled by Food:  How to trick yourself into eating less”.  Today is the first in a series to help you, based on the article.

It’s been noted that we live in gross proximity to food 24/7.  Cornell University professor Brian Wansink is noted as saying, “We’re always yards away from either a refrigerator or a restaurant or a vending machine.  That wasn’t the case a few decades ago.”  With this, we are perpetually being tempted by food and having to decide whether or not to eat!  With the constant bombardment, often we are beat down to just eating.  If we recognize WHY we overeat, maybe we can begin to eat when we are hungry.

Professor Wansink talks about being fooled by food.  He says:

• We eat because food tastes good or because we are hungry, BUT the reality of why we eat is prominently because food is constantly available.  There’s nothing to stop us from grabbing food and eating it:  we do this mindlessly.
• People want to be at a healthy weight.  To do this, people need to think “skinny”, not “wide”.  People pay more attention to height:  they are in greater danger of overeating from a wide bowl than a taller, skinnier one.  In nature, tall is more threatening than wide.  Tall is more threatening as a predator.  People do not see wide things as a threat.  So….  let kids (& you) pick a tall skinny snack:  it will generally have less than a similar wide one & kids/you will think it has more.
• Food Companies will shrink only the width of packages (not the height) when they make packages smaller.  Think of several companies changing the amount of pasta they sell from 16 to 12oz.  People generally underestimate how much a package holds when all three of its dimensions increase (height, width, and depth).  So:  “If you buy a large popcorn, and it is twice as tall as small, we’d see it.  But if it’s a little bigger top to bottom, side to side, and front to back, you may not see that it holds twice as much.”
• We DO eat more when we use larger bowls and spoons!  If you serve people (including kids as young as FOUR) food in a larger bowl, they serve themselves 28% more than if the bowl was smaller.  Experts are even fooled.  Cues (big bowls/utensils) are not stoppable in terms of controlling of how much we put in.   The best way to practice portion control by using smaller bowls, plates, and spoons.

Want to know more?  Stay tuned for the continuing saga……