The best kept secret in the food industry is its liberal use of the definition of a serving size. You’d think a serving size should reflect what the average person consumes, but it seems that many manufacturers are selling their products to smurfs, not humans. How else can you explain exactly 11 potato chips or half a cup of ice cream counting as a serving?

The FDA, it appears, is calling the bluff, and according to the New York Times,

is now looking at bringing serving sizes for foods like chips, cookies, breakfast cereals and ice cream into line with how Americans really eat. Combined with more prominent labeling, the result could be a greater sense of public caution about unhealthy foods. Read more…

The NY Times article also include four graphic examples of how wrong serving sizes distort people’s perception of the calories they will actually consume.

What you need to know:

The serving size is a regulated term required for presentation on the nutrition facts panel of packaged foods and beverages. The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) of the early 90’s mandated manufacturers to state the serving size of a product in both measurable amount (grams, fluid ounces, etc..) and consumer graspable terms (2 cookie, half a cup, 1 doughnut). The actual quantity of product per serving is based on outdated consumer surveys, before the era of super-sized meals, big-gulp drinks, and a-pint-at-a-sitting ice creams.

Many companies take advantage of this loophole to literally trick consumers into thinking they’ll be consuming less calories than what they actually do. Here’s a fun trick when you want to create a 100 calorie snack out of a 150 calorie serving – reduce the serving size from 3 to 2 cookies. Genius!

Most annoying are the single serving products that end up actually containing more than a single serving. For example – vending machine soft drinks that come in 20 fl oz bottle meant for a single person to consume, but actually composed of two and a half servings! Duane Reade’s potato chips single serve bag state that there are only 100 calories per serving. Careful examination shows a discrepancy where the serving is defined as 1 oz, but the bag is one an one third ounces, adding 34 more calories to the deal.

If the FDA does take action on this issue, it will be a godsend. We recently published a list of Ten fixes the FDA can require for nutrition labels, such as  getting rid of the silly health claims and stating amount of ADDED sugar. Out #1 request was for proper indication of serving sizes.

What to do at the supermarket:

It’s not enough to check the calorie count per serving, you also need to make sure the serving size suggested by the manufacturer is what you really intend to consume. Be on the lookout especially with snacks and soft drinks, where the empty calories can easily double or triple before you even stop for your first breath of air.

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This is a guest blog post by Carol Harvey, director of nutrition labeling at Palate Works. She recently visited the San Francisco Fancy Food Show.

For 35 years, the Fancy Food Show has been the trade show of all things tasty, gourmet and upscale. Many food products are launched there, including an increasing number dished up as “healthy” or “better for you,” due to evolving consumer demand.

In fact, the “top 5 food trends” for 2010 just announced by NASFT (the trade association that produces the show) include “good-for-you foods”. This “trend,” brewing for most of the 20 years that I have been attending the show, has proven a smart business move for a number of brands.

Whether any of the 100,000+ exhibited products really nailed the “taste + nutrition” prize was my focus again this year in San Francisco. And once again, how a company uses nutrition claims separated those that know their nutrition and labeling from those that don’t. Here are three examples. Read more…

As if we haven’t got enough things to worry about, 8 years ago Swedish scientists discovered that acrylamide, a synthetic potentially dangerous chemical used for various industrial purposes, also appears in french fries and potato chips. More accurately, it forms in some foods during high-temperature cooking processes, such as frying, roasting, and baking.

What you need to know:

1. Acrylamide is formed in a high heat reaction of sugars and asparagine (an amino acid) that are naturally present in certain foods such as potatoes and breads.

2. Frying, roasting, and cooking form acrylamide, but not boiling, steaming, or microwaving.

3. Acrylamide can also be found in cigarette smoke.

4. The health risks associated with acrylamide are still being investigated by health organizations and the FDA. It has been shown to cause cancer in animals in high doses. Additional evidence talks about damage to reproductive glands.

5. Coffee, potatoes, and grain products are foods that form the highest level of acrylamide, whereas meat and dairy products produce almost none.

6. Acrylamide levels increase the higher the heat level and the longer the food is exposed to the heat source.

7. Frying creates the most acrylamide, roasting less, and baking the lowest of the three.

What to do in the kitchen:

8. Store your potatoes above 46 degrees Fahrenheit. At lower temperatures, fructose content in the potato rises sharply and that results in more acrylamide forming while frying or baking.

9. Soaking raw potato slices in water for 15-30 minutes before frying or roasting helps reduce acrylamide formation during cooking.

10. Fry potatoes rarely (french fires are not exactly a health food you know), and when you do, stop when they become golden, but not brown.

11. When toasting bread, prefer a lightly colored toast to a brown one.

sources of information: FDA, WHO

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A December article from Health Education & Behavior, wanted to test the thesis that if we take junk food out of schools, kids will compensate by pigging out at home or elsewhere.

Over a 2 year period, researchers studied six middle schools in the Northeast. The research was led by Marlene Schwartz, Ph.D., deputy director at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. Three of the schools replaced potato chips, doughnuts, soft drinks and cookies with water, 100% fruit juice, baked chips, granola bars, and fruit. Three other schools maintained their existing food regimen.

Guess what happened?

What you need to know:

According to Schwartz – “we found that when you take soda and high-fat snacks out of schools, students did not compensate at home. Instead, they ate better at school and no worse at home.”

So why aren’t all schools rushing to rid themselves of junk food?

The answer, as usual, is money.

Children are a huge market for food manufacturers. Selling snacks and beverages at schools is a huge business opportunity and it creates lifelong loyalty. Just ask a Coke exec who once said “get them while they’re young”.

Schools benefit from junk food sales too, by getting a commission on sales from vending machines. The dimes and quarters quickly add up to 6 figure sums that help many a school under severe financial burden.

Thankfully more and more schools are realizing that the long term benefits of healthy eating outweigh the short term financial gain.

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Fooducate is participating in the annual Food & Nutriton Conference and Expo (FNCE) in Denver this year. We’ll be covering the show on the blog and on twitter, trying to bring interesting stories and attractions, along with a dash of opinion.

Today, as a pre-conference activity a group of dietitians and food professionals visited a local Frito-Lay manufacturing plant where we were given a tour and presentations about the company’s commitment to health and sustainability. We have to admit that healthy and ecology are not the first 2 things that come to mind when thinking about potato chips. That said, the PR team and plant staff did provide interesting information.

Here then, are a few observations:

1. A Dorito or Frito right hot off the machine is definitely tastier than what you get out of the bag a week or month later.

2. Seeing how a truckload of corn or potato is transformed in a matter of minutes to a bagged savory snack is quite remarkable. There’s a lot of engineering and quality control that goes into this process, regardless of the fact that the end product is not a picture of perfect nutrition.

3. Frito-Lay, owned by PepsiCo, has been and is continuing to lead in nutrition and sustainability, according to its press materials. Some examples include becoming a “net zero plant” by 2011. This means energy in equals energy out. This is achieved by reusing water, generating electricity through solar and other renewable means.

4. The nutrition improvements include – removal of bad fats in the 1980’s , then the removal of trans fats in the early 2000’s. Only 3 ingredients – potatoes, oil, salt. Relatively low amount of sodium – same as in a slice of bread.

5. When asked how much potato chips America consumed, the answer was 2-3 servings a week per person!

6. If that’s not enough, the dietitians working at Frito Lay said that as part of a balanced diet, there’s no problem in your children consuming a serving of potato chips every single day.

7. Baked chips, which have only 20% of the fat in the regualr chips account for only 7% of chip sales for Frito-Lay.

8. Potatoes sourced by Frito-Lay are of a specific variety with exactly the right shape, size, extra thin peel, and starchiness.

9. From truck to bag, it takes a potato just 12 minutes to go the route.

10. Damaged chips and corn products are not wasted, they get sold to local pig farmers. Wonder if all that Nacho seasoning does anything to the hogs…

11. The average potato chip serving is 1 oz. or 16 chips, according to the product label. When asked if this is in line with what people actually consume (we think people eat much more), the answer was that studies on this have not been carried out. The team was quick to point out the single serve bags, the portion control bags, and that for bags under 3 oz that may be consumed in a single sitting nutrition information is presented both per 1 oz serving and for the entire bag.

Summary – all in all, the visit opened our eyes to the ingenuity both in manufacturing and product formulation. We are happy that there are registered dietitians working at Frito-Lay helping to make the products less bad for us.

But at the end of the day we must still remember, these are just snacks. They are not meant to replace real food, nor should you look at them as a source of any substantial nutrients. And we definitely don’t think it’s fine to serve our kids potato chips 7 days a week. But then again, we don’t get our paycheck from Frito-Lay.

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Some shoppers may have noticed lately that packages of Frito-Lay brand potato chips, Doritos, Cheetos, and Tostitos are bigger than they used to be. It’s hard to miss, especially when the one on Tostitos says: ”Hey! There’s 20 percent more free fun to share in here!”

That’s 20% more calories, fat, and sodium too.

The price, though, hasn’t changed. Why would a manufacturer want to give us this gift?

The New York Times explains:

Think of your food packages like an economic barometer: Times are tough, so costs are low and packages are bigger. When times are good, costs are high and packages, to compensate, get smaller.

Tough times also mean consumers have less money to spend, so they want those bigger packages. Experts say this is a promotional tool that helps branded food companies steer shoppers back to their products and away from less expensive, store-brand alternatives.

What you need to know:

Last year, as commodity prices were going through the roof, manufacturers had a dilemma – should they raise prices to remain profitable? The answer was no. Instead, they sneakily reduced the amount of product and employed a grocery shrink ray to reduce the package size. Packaged items from Red Bull to chicken wings to peanut butter were secretly shrunk, and consumers were unknowingly paying more per ounce of food / beverage.

Now that commodity prices are way down and consumers are pinching pennies, it’s time to reverse the shrink ray and start to buff up those packages. Lowering prices would be great for us, but food companies are afraid that it would devalue their brand and cause problems in the future when they’ll want to raise prices again.

While last year’s shrink ray was hush hush, this year’s good deeds of package growth should not go unheard right? You betcha, and that’s why all the XYZ-os are labeled with the “20% more” marketing message.

Thanks food manufacturers, for being dishonest with us last year, and for stuffing us with even more of you unhealthy snacks this year.

At least one thing hasn’t changed – the serving size – a laughable 11 chips. Yes, that’s right, what people wolf down between opening the bag to pouring its contents into a serving bowl. But we’ll talk about serving sizes in another post.

What to do at the supermarket:

Some supermarkets let you easily compare product prices by reading shelf tags with price per oz / fl oz. This is a very helpful tool.

But even more helpful to you will be to cut down on the amount of processed snacks you purchase, and direct the savings to more natural options like fresh fruits, dried fruits, and nuts.

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photo credit: Patrishe

Have your children seen an ad for fresh apples lately? How about a commercial for yams or carrots?

Probably not.

But they most likely have seen lots of advertisements for candy, soft drinks, sugary cereals, and other processed food like substances.

And what they see, they immediately turn into action. At least, this is what a study from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale has concluded. From the New York Times:

In one experiment, 118 children, ages 7 to 11, were each given bowls of Goldfish crackers and then left to watch a 14-minute cartoon. During the commercial breaks, some of the children saw ads for games and entertainment; others watched four spots for unhealthy snacks like waffle sticks with syrup, fruit roll-ups and potato chips. The children who saw the food spots ate 45 percent more Goldfish than those who watched the game commercials.

What you need to know:

It’s an uphill battle for parents today to try and keep their children eating healthfully. Food manufacturers are not making things easy.  Tens of thousands of nutritiously superfluous products manufactured for kids,  and the big brands spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising to those eyeballs that count the most.

Some parents have decided to live TV free. Others Tivo commercials away. But for the most part, our impressionable younger generation is learning what to eat from brand marketers on Madison Avenue.

What to do at the supermarket:

You need to start educating your children from a very early age about healthy eating habits. Definitely provide snacks and sweets, but in moderation.

You also need to explain that not everything on TV is  true, and when it comes to advertising, there are motives present not necessarily in the best interest of the consumer.

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The hottest trend in the food industry lately is functional food. Although there is not formal definition for the term, its agreed that these are foods that can help reduce the risk of disease due to the presence of specific nutrients.

In general, the best functional foods are also the most unprocessed ones – fruits, vegetables and whole grains, as an example.

However, more and more processed foods are being fortified with nutrients in order to become “functional.” Manufacturers have realized that health sells, and usually commands a higher margin too.

And so we find calcium added to orange juice, vitamin C added to fruit snacks, and breakfast cereals fortified with pretty much the entire alphabet of minerals and vitamins.

OK. In the examples above, they’ve made decent products a bit healthier. But what can manufacturers do with products that at their core are not so healthy? Can a sugary / fatty / salty (take your pick) item  be miraculously transformed into something nutritious?

If we’re to judge by the sales of functional foods, sales are growing at a great clip, which means consumers have been convinced that the bag of cheese puffs fortified with omega-3 is really good for them.

An article in the Wall Street Journal recently tackled this topic:

Lillian Cheung, Ph.D, a nutrition professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, [...] points out that adding nutrients to a food can encourage people to perceive it as unequivocally healthy, whether it’s low-fat and fiber-rich oatmeal that’s been fortified or a similarly enhanced bag of potato chips packed with fat and bereft of any naturally occurring nutrients that the oatmeal has. “The fact that brands have gone to the trouble to add this stuff sends an implicit message that the finished product is desirable, and that’s just not always the case,” she says.

“Sports drinks are an example. The sugar they contain is so much worse than the added vitamins. But that information gets obscured.”

read more…

What you need to know:

The FDA does not recognize functional foods as a category. Which means it’s a wild west for marketers to sell us stories.

So if it’s too good to be true, it isn’t.

What to do at the supermarket:

Go for foods that are naturally functional. The less a food is processed, the most benefit you’ll reap. For example, get your omega-3 from fish, not a snack bar. If you’re still deficient in a certain nutrient, a fortified product is a good option, but only if at its base it is a nutritious product (non sugary cereals yes, soft drinks – NO).

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Flickr Photo: stu_spivack

Prevention magazine presents 8 foods hyped and marketed as healthy, when actually, they’re not:

“From a distance, some foods seem like healthful choices because of the way they’re packaged or labeled,” says Janel Ovrut, MS, RD, a Boston-based dietitian. “But just because a product’s marketing gives it an aura of health doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good for you.”

The list includes:

* Baked potato chips. Better for you: Popcorn
* Gummy fruit snacks. Little fruit, lots of sugar. Better: Fresh/dried fruit
* Diet soda. Better: Flavored seltzer water
* Low-fat cookies. Low-Fat is a codeword for lots of sugar. Better: Oatmeal Cookies.

Read the full article…

What you need to know:

The less a food is processed, the more likely it is to be better for you. It retains the original vitamins and minerals. Trying to reduce fat by replacing it with sugars is not going to help you lose weight or improve your health.

A healthy candy bar is simply an oxymoron. When you do want to indulge, do so with the tastiest ice cream or candy without remorse. Just don’t do it too often.

What to do at the supermarket:

Don’t bother reading the health claims. Check the nutrition label and ingredient list to get the real picture.

Comedian Brian Regan talks about the serving size of Fig Newtons and Ice Cream:

What you need to know:

If the calorie count seems too low, or there is too little fat, sodium, and/or sugar to be this tasty, chances are the manufacturer reduced the serving size to a very low number. Take Lay’s Classic Potato Chips for example. An 11 oz. bag has 11 servings! That translates to about 15 chips weighing in at 1 oz. Truly, aside from a 2 year old, who eats such a small amount?

This 1 oz “mini-serving” carries 150 calories, 90 of them from fat. But if you’re watching TV with your spouse, good chances are you’ll polish off the entire bag yourselves. For arguments sake, let’s say your 2 kids are chugging down the chips as well. 11 ounces divided by 4 is just over 2.5 oz, or two and a half times more than the original serving size. Which means 412 calories, a hefty snack indeed.

What to do at the supermarket:

Look for the “serving size”  and “number of servings” information at the top of a food’s nutrition label. If it seems too high, or the serving size too small, you’ll have to recalculate the nutrition information based on how much you consume.

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