Recently, while doing some research on label reading, I had the pleasure of meticulously combing through the grocery aisles. I’ve shopped on the relatively unprocessed side of things for quite some time, so this was an education for me to say the least. Imagine the spectacle of me at the grocery store, taking pictures of labels on commonly consumed foods like yogurt, bread, and vegetable oil spread. I really do wonder what the other shoppers and store employees must’ve thought! At one point I was sitting on the floor of the bread aisle with several different loaves in front of me, inspecting the front and back of each package. Some of what I found in my travels was pretty disturbing.
Did you know that Wonder makes a variety of bread called “Whole Grain White Bread?” What on earth does that mean? Isn’t “Whole Grain White” sort of an oxymoron? I went to their website and they actually have the gall to put in print, “White bread can be an important part of a balanced diet. We fortify many of our white breads with essential vitamins and minerals, so they’re as nutritious as they are delicious.” Are they serious?
Breads are fortified and enriched because food manufacturers destroy much of the nutrition through processing. So why process a food? Processing adds value and increases revenue. A food manufacturer’s goal is to start with cheap inputs and add enough value to sufficiently mark up the price and maximize profit. That’s why high fructose corn syrup is now more widely used in processed foods than sucrose; it’s cheaper.
The US government requires that food manufacturers enrich processed carbohydrates with some lost nutrients, because deficiencies were noted in the general population at one point or another. Enriching breads with folic acid in response to an increase in the incidence of neural tube birth defects comes to mind. Food manufacturers may chose to further fortify a food product, why? You guessed it, because adding nutrients “adds value” and allows them to raise the price. Enriching and fortifying processed foods with nutrients is surely better than leaving them without; however, food producers could not hope to replace everything that is lost in processing. In other words, leave the Wonder Whole Grain White Bread on the shelf.
Processing can do some pretty nasty things. Especially when it comes to unsaturated fats. Excessive heat turns them from components of a healthy diet into deadly substances. I’m of course referring to trans fat, which is the result of adding hydrogen to vegetable oils. Hydrogenated oils (aka trans fats) have been linked to both increases in cholesterol and heart disease. As a result of all the negative press surrounding trans fat, many margarine producers found ways to remove it from their food products. But not all heeded the call, as I became painfully aware on my trip to the grocery store.
I first heard of Benecol when a client was using it in place of butter. After he recounted some of the ingredients during one of our sessions, I advised him that butter with all its saturated fat was probably a better choice. Margarine spreads are usually not that healthy. Even if they are free of trans fatty acids, they are generally horribly processed. Benecol is no exception, as it comes with a laundry list of confusing ingredients.
In addition, it is marketed as a vegetable oil spread with “No Trans Fatty Acids,” however; the spread contains partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Any kind of hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil is synonymous with trans fat. The makers of Benecol are of course allowed to get away with this because if an ingredient comprises less than half a gram per serving, then they can list it as zero. Isn’t food marketing wonderful?
My research was for a video on label reading; as I write this post, the video is nearing completion. You almost need a Ph.D. to navigate the grocery aisles these days. My goal in making the video, was to demystify some of the more confusing grocery items for the average shopper. Be sure to look for it on the Resources page of my website.
