Last week, we talked about how some seemingly easy-to-understand words were being stretched too far, things like “all natural,” “high protein,” “zero trans fat,” and “low carb.”  Unfortunately, Brown Baggers, there are more buzz words to be wary of, so get ready.

It seems like the words “sugar free” and “no sugar added” would be good things, right?  It would seem so because we could all watch our sugar intake more closely, right?  Sure, but unfortunately sugar free and no sugar added usually mean that artificial sweeteners and/or man-made sugar alcohols were added instead.  Artificial sweeteners can adversely affect the digestive systems of people with sensitive stomachs and have a host of other negative attributes to boot, so adding them to your food instead of sugar isn’t the healthiest idea.  Stick with natural sugar, or better yet natural sweeteners like honey, agave nectar, and maple syrup (to name a few), and just cut down on your sugar intake.

Think foods that say “high fiber” will give you that boost in fighting heart disease and keeping the digestive system moving?  They might, but the side effects might not be what you’re looking for.  Most of the time, foods with added fiber are using chicory root fiber, polydextrose, and oat fiber, or what are called “functional fibers,”  which are actually fibers, but they may make you bloated and gassy and don’t have the same full effects as those fibers which occur naturally in food.  If you just make sure to work in your fruits, veggies, beans and whole grains every day, you’ll more than likely get plenty of fiber without “adding.”

Gluten-free is very important to people with Celiac disease or wheat/gluten allergy, but others have taken up the banner of the gluten-free diet as well, and so market shelves all over are full of foods proclaiming that they are gluten free.  And guess what?  They are!  By law, foods that are labeled “gluten free” may not contain any gluten or wheat, so in this case, you’re getting just what you’re told.  What they don’t tell you is that what these foods lack in gluten, they make up for in calories.  You’d do better to get your gluten-free foods the natural way—by eating foods like, rice, sweet potatoes and quinoa (to name a few) that naturally contain no gluten.

What can you take away from all of this?  Be wary.  Read labels.  Most importantly, if you only want to eat food that is what it purports to be, then stick to the basics:  fruits, veggies, nuts, fish, poultry, etc.  For the healthiest diet, keep your processed foods to a minimum.  Come see us at Brown Bag for breakfast or lunch or both!  When you eat with us, you always get just what you asked for!

Published June 13, 2013

Thinking that phrases like, “sugar free” and “fat free” sound a little too good to be true?  Then you’re ahead of the vast consumer curve out there.  Food companies and marketing execs the world over take note of trends—that’s their job—and as people have turned in the last decade or so toward high-protein, fat-free, sugar-free, no-sugar-added, low-carb foods, more and more options have become available for purchase.  But are those products all that they seem? Thankfully, consumers have taken a turn toward the healthy side of street, but buzzwords and nutrition don’t always go hand in hand.

Take the term “all natural,” for example.  Are you thinking this means that your chips were fresh potatoes, cut up and dropped into a vat of pure vegetable oil (or other oil), and fried, cooled and packed off to you without so much as a preservative to tarnish their “all natural” state?  Think again.  These days, “all natural” can mean all sorts of things because the FDA hasn’t yet come up with a hard and fast rule on what exactly “all natural” should mean.  It doesn’t seem like such a hard question, does it?  Apparently, it is because today “all natural” can mean that your food still has preservatives and genetically modified ingredients in it.  Want to stay away from some of those things?  Read the labels and stay away from foods that stray from whole ingredients that you readily recognize.

Another term that seems to be applied fairly liberally these days is “zero trans fats.”  One would think that zero still means nothing, but apparently today zero can equal amounts like 0.5%, which may be a small number but is still greater than zero.  Lots of foods have the words “zero trans fats” stamped right on the front for all the world to see, but they still slip some trans fat in there and call their product(s) “trans fat free” (unless you look closely at the nutrition information).  Sure, you’re still getting a lot less fat than a Super Value Meal at McDonald’s, but over time, those trans fats can build up and cause health problems, like high cholesterol.

If you’re thinking that “high protein” and “low carb” are the key words for any food you want to eat, than don’t go gently into that ingredient list.  Take a long look for words like “soy protein isolate,” for example.  Sure, soy is high in protein, but you’d do better to get your protein from edamame rather than the manipulated and processed form available in “high protein” packaged foods.  Try chicken, lean beef, fish, quinoa, or beans to get a pure source of protein.  And who says sky-high levels of protein are good for you, anyway?  Too much protein can kick your kidneys into hyper-space.  Carbs are not demons, they are part of a healthy, balanced diet, and when you eat “low-carb” processed foods, you’re getting artificial sweeteners and processed sources of fiber which can never compare nutritionally to the pure fiber of bananas, oatmeal and raspberries (to name just a few sources).

“I do not think that means what you think it means,” says Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride.  He may have been referring to the continued misuse of the word “inconceivable,” but his words should be at the forefront of your mind when it comes to food labeling.  Truth in advertising very often doesn’t apply to processed, packaged foods.  Look at all of the lawsuits against food companies, if you don’t believe us.  At Brown Bag, we believe in healthy, fresh food, made from scratch and sourced locally whenever possible.  If you are what you eat, don’t you want to be the best and most healthful food you can be?