Marketing genius or smoke and mirrors? Triscuits, those slightly salty wheat thins,  are being sold with a small surprise inside. No, not a toy from China, rather a small bag filled with … seeds!

Kraft is encouraging its customers to connect with real, natural, local food by no less than growing it at home or at a community garden. Their  “Home Farming” website invites people to join the movement and plant herbs and veggies.

While cynical observers may play this down as a marketing trick by a company famous for processed foods (cheese “products“, anyone?), we think this is a great idea. Getting people to connect to the soil and appreciate the hard work it takes to bring forth food from the land is a wonderful idea, even if the instigator has additional motives.

As for Triscuits themselves, they’re for the most part a better than average snack option in the savory category. Take for example the BAKED WHOLE GRAIN WHEAT ORIGINAL, which has only 3 ingredients – whole wheat flour, vegetable oil, and salt. A serving is only 120 calories, with 1 gram of saturated fat (relatively low) , 3 grams of fiber (very good), and 180mg of sodium (8% of the daily max).

The problem is that a serving size is defined as 28g (one ounce), but people don’t know how many Triscuits that works out to. So how will they know when to stop?

The number, after counting, is 7 Triscuits per serving. SEVEN. That’s a mighty tiny serving, don’t you think?

This before we dress up the Triscuit, for example with some cheese (more saturated fat and calories), as shown in the product package.

What to do at the supermarket:

When looking for savory snacks, check the side panel for important information:

1. How big or tiny is the serving size? Does it represent what you’d normally consume in an “eating event”.
2. Look at the ingredient list to see that it does not contain any surprises such as partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (trans fat) or “flavorings”.
3. Read the nutrition facts panel to understand how many calories you’re getting and their breakdown protein/fat/carbs.

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1. Potato Chips date back to 1853. An unhappy customer at a restaurant in Saratoga Springs, NY kept returning his fried potatoes to the chef, requesting they be prepared much thinner. The chef sliced them so thin that they could not be eaten with a fork, and thus was born the potato chip.

2. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that potato chips expanded from restaurant food and started selling in bags.

3. Flavored chips were born in the 1950’s by a small independent manufacturer who then sold the concept to the larger corporations.

4. As junk food goes, potato chips contain only 3 ingredients (potatoes, oil, salt) and are considered by some nutritionists the lesser of savory evils.

5. Potato chips were sold for over $15B (!!!) last year worldwide. They tally up about one third of all savory snacks.

6. While we call them potato chips, our overseas friends use the word crisps.

7. A single serving of potato chips, 1 ounce, contains only 150 calories, 10 grams of fat and 180mg of salt. That’s less than 10% of the daily calories of most people, about 15% of the fat, and 8% of the maximum sodium intake.

8. Problem is that most people don’t stop at one serving. Honestly, are 11 chips enough for you? People can wolf down 5 times that amount in sitting, dip not included…

9. One of the most popular flavored potato chip varieties is Sour Cream and Onion. Compared to just 3 ingredients in the original version, this one has 20 ingredients including MSG, Palm oil, and artificial colorings.

10. Just in case you were wondering, this national holiday does not appear in congressional records. It’s just another made up holiday by snack food industry marketing geniuses.

What to do at the supermarket:

Potato chips don’t have to be a daily ritual with your lunch sandwich. However, if you do buy them, choose potato chips that have been minimally processed -  Stay with the plain, unflavored chips as they have no additives and colorings. Buy single serve 1 oz. bags of chips so that you won’t be tempted to eat more than one serving at a time.

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This is a guest blog post by Carol Harvey, director of nutrition labeling at Palate Works.

Nutrition Facts labels look so official in that bold, uniform format. They must be correct… and are verified by FDA, right?

While FDA regulates nutrition labeling, they do not pre-approve nutrition panels, nor do they spend much time looking for inaccurate ones. With thousands of new products hitting the shelves every year, it would take a massively larger FDA budget. The result is something of a labeling Wild West in the food aisles and online.

Nutrition Facts data is generated one of two ways:  database analysis of the recipe (with software), or chemical analysis of an actual sample of the food (in a laboratory). Both have limitations and are not immune to human error, but in the hands of the inexperienced (or deceitful), database analysis is much less reliable. It is also much cheaper than a lab (about 15% of the cost or less), so it tends to be the choice of restaurants and smaller food companies, many of whom do it themselves with no knowledge of labeling regulations, nutrition, or what correct data should look like.

There are many ways that database analysis can result in imprecise, inaccurate, or simply wrong nutrition data. Fortunately, some are obvious enough to spot without plunking down a small fortune for chemical analysis.

Here are six examples of common nutrition label errors: Read more…

Popcorn, the quintessential snack of the movies, is a long standing tradition.

The Good: it’s a healthy, low calories snack – very filling due to its fiber content, and less than 100 calories per 3 cups of air popped popcorn.

The Bad: Problems start when pop corn is bathed in oils and butters and serving sizes balloon to double, triple, and higher of the the 3 cup portion size.

The VERY BAD: Popcorn served in movie theaters, in conjunction with soda pop. The Center for Science in the Public Interest just published a report on this matter, and some of the finding were outrageous – Regal theaters largest size popcorn and soda are the caloric equivalent of three McDonald’s Quarter Pounders PLUS 12 pats of butter. The 1600 calories are almost a whole day’s worth, while the 60 grams of saturated fat are supposed to get you by a long weekend (that’s 3 days!). It’s got 20 cups of popcorn, or almost 7 times the recommended portion size.

“Regal and AMC are our nominees for Best Supporting Actor in the Obesity Epidemic,” said CSPI senior nutritionist Jayne Hurley

Oh well, at least that combo is quite expensive, $12.00. That should give some people pause, if not the nutritional atrocity.

Compare to the innocent serving sizes of the 1950’s drive-ins in the clip above.

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Note: The following is a guest post by Andy Bellatti, MS. He is the creator of the Small Bites blog, where this post originally appeared.  Andy is on the Registered Dietitian track at New York University’s Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health.

Okay, quick.
You’re standing in front of a vending machine a few hours after having finished lunch, in search of a savory snack.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you are at an all-day workshop in some random building, you didn’t bring a snack with you, and there’s another three hours until you get home and can fix yourself dinner.

The vending machine offers you the following options: plain potato chips, tortilla chips, pretzels, and crackers.

Which would you choose to get the most nutritional bang for your buck?  If you said potato chips — you are RIGHT.

Yes, you read correctly.  Let me explain.

A one-ounce bag of Lay’s potato chips contains:

• 150 calories
• 10 grams fat (1 gram saturated)
• 180 milligrams sodium

A one-ounce bag of tortilla chips provides:

• 140 calories
• 7 grams fat (1 gram saturated)
• 125 milligrams sodium

Let’s take a look at what a one-ounce bag of pretzels adds up to:

• 100 calories
• 0 grams fat
• 580 milligrams sodium

Finally, here is what you get from a one-ounce bag of crackers (i.e. Wheat Thins)

• 150 calories
• 6 grams fat (1 gram saturated)
• 280 milligrams sodium

Let’s discuss.

Although many people are automatically sold by their absence of fat, I have issues with pretzels.  I consider them to be a nutritionally lame snack.

Not only are most of them entirely comprised of refined white flour, they also lack the three nutrients that provide a feeling of satiety, or fullness: fat, protein, and fiber.

The problem with foods that offer negligible amounts of those three nutrients is that it takes quite a bit of their calories to feel satisfied.  Snacking on 150 calorie of almonds, for example (which contain fat, protein, and fiber), leaves you fuller for longer than that same amount of calories from pretzels.

Although crackers like Wheat Thins have some fat, they are mostly made with white flour.  Pass.

That brings us to tortilla chips and potato chips.

Calorically, they are almost equal.  Although both have the same amount of saturated fat, tortilla chips have a few less grams of total fat and a slightly lower sodium content.

However, it is what you don’t see on nutrition labels that gives potato chips the edge — potassium!

A one-ounce serving of potato chips provides, on average, 460 milligrams of potassium — as much as a medium banana.  That same amount of tortilla chips?  Sixty milligrams.

Remember, adequate potassium intake is a crucial tool against hypertension (cutting back on sodium is only part of the equation).  Coincidentally, the average US diet is too high in sodium and too low in potassium.

The additional 65 milligrams of sodium in potato chips (compared to corn chips) is a moot point when you consider they come bundled with that much potassium.

It also doesn’t hurt that the ingredient list for potato chips (such as Lay’s) is nice and basic: potatoes, oil, and salt.  No extra junk.

Let me be perfectly clear — this is not a recommendation to get your potassium from potato chips.  Nor am I christening potato chips as a healthy snack when you’re on the run.

However, nutrition is about making the most out of whatever choices you have available.  You aren’t always going to have fresh fruits, nuts, organic vegetables and whole grains at your disposal, so it’s always good to be prepared for moments like these.

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As if we don’t have enough to worry about with respect to nutrition, a set of new studies has shown that children are receiving way below their required amount of vitamin D.

What is vitamin D? Why is it important? Why aren’t kids getting enough? And what are its best food sources?

Read more…

General Mills published a press release last week heralding a new line of Frozen TV Dinners, branded Wanchai Ferry. The lineup includes 5 flavors: spicy garlic chicken, orange chicken, sweet & spicy shrimp, sweet & sour chicken, and shrimp lo mein. Just for fun, we took a look inside the label of the spicy garlic chicken. Read more…

Health claims on processed food packages are usually nothing more than marketing messages. So when Kellogg’s plasters the word “IMMUNITY” in quadruple font on the front of its Rice Krispies breakfast cereal, we just have to take a peek (thanks to Fooducate reader TD for the heads up).

We took a look at the product nutrition information and at the Rice Krispies website. We’re not sure if this is a new formulation or just a new marketing campaign, but this is what Kellogg’s boasts:

“Now each and every box is fortified with vitamins and nutrients that work together to help support your child’s immunity.”

“The cereal you love, invisibly better”.

Great pitch folks. Now let’s analyze the facts…

Read more…

Dried fruit are a tasty snack. They are supposedly as good as fresh fruit nutritionally, and have the added benefit of being available throughout the year, easy to store, durable, and versatile.

We decided to take a look at a well known brand, Sunsweet, which has been selling an Antioxidant Blend for the past few years. While the main ingredients are dried fruit, we were also surprised to find added sugar and oils in the list.

Read on for a full review of Sunsweet Antioxidant Blend.

Read more…

The word salad conjures, for most people, mounds of iceberg lettuce, a few other veggies, and a hefty ladle of dressing. As with many things, the US did not invent it, but in the last 50 years we have elevated salad dressing to a billion dollar industry with hundreds of varieties awaiting us in a special condiments aisle in the supermarket. You know something is big when it has its own trade organization.

In southern Europe and the Mediterranean, a salad is dressed by mixing some fresh lemon juice, a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and drizzling on top of a freshly cut salad. It seems that here, though, folks cannot complete that basic task and therefore gladly pay $3.00-$4.00 for a bottled solution. The price paid isn’t just monetary, as there are ingredients in some commercial dressings that are better kept away from our bodies.

Read more…