SCARY RESULTS WHEN SCIENCE MEETS FOOD MARKETING
Reading Grocery Labels
“Scientists isolate and identify nutrients, which sounds like a logical way to analyze food. But it isn’t…”
SUMMARY
The more nutritional claims on processed foods, the more likely they are less nutritious than their whole food equivalents.
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You will often read health claims on food labels at your local grocery store such as:
“50% less fat”
“20% Dietary Fiber”
“Lower Cholesterol”
“Higher in B Vitamins”
What do these labels really mean? Oftentimes, they mean very little in the way of defining healthy food. Instead, they are simply, marketing ploys to sell you products that may actually be less healthy than their whole food equivalents.
For example, that 20% dietary fiber product may have much less fiber, bite for bite, than a simple serving of inexpensive beans, yet cost several times as much.
So what’s contributing to all these ingenuous claims?
According to an article at Men’s Health, the problem is science meeting up with marketing. Scientists isolate and indentify different nutrients, and then marketing exploits each nutrient on its own. That is a mistake. People need whole foods, not isolated nutrients.
So, the next time you see a claim at the store of any food containing more of this nutrient or that nutrient, you might want to think about choosing the cheapest whole food alternative.
The best way to obtain important nutrients is eat whole fresh fruits, vegetables, sprouted seeds, nuts, grains in ther natural, God given form.
According to the American Medical Association, “the greater the focus on nutrients, the less healthful [processed] foods have become.”
“Gyorgy Scrinis, Ph.D., a sociologist of science at the University of Melbourne, Australia, calls the mindset “nutritionism.” “It’s the tendency to celebrate or demonize particular nutrients,” he says, “and to take nutrients out of the context of the foods in which they’re embedded, and exaggerate their health effects.” As a result, nutritionism can inadvertently steer consumers toward processed foods instead of away from them.”
