HOW NUTRITIONAL LABLES FOOL YOU You see the use of “complex” and “simple” carbs all the time when talking about sugars, but how useful are these differentiations really? Do Nutrition Facts Labels give you any useful information when they list “sugars”? The answer is of course they don’t and it’s much more relevant to look at the metabolic effects of specific foods on your body than using the criteria that are generally used to classify “sugars.” Many carbohydrate sources labelled “complex” are things you really don’t want to be eating and many foods that are high in what is generally identified as “sugars” are foods that you definitely want to consume. Sugars, both mono- and di-saccharides, are all classified as “sugars” on the nutrition label. This is simply a measure of the number of carbon molecules in each chain of carbohydrate. It’s really quite misleading, as it doesn’t tell you about how your body will metabolise the substance. If we look at some foods that by anyone’s standards are healthy and unprocessed you’ll see what I mean. A package of broccoli contains 13g total carbs, 8g fibre, 4g “sugars” according to the lable. That means that after you subtract the fibre carbs from the total carbs, 80% of the “net” or “effective” carbs come from sugars! How helpful is that? Let’s look at a cup of almonds. It contains 27g total carbs, 16g fibre and 7g “sugars”. That means that 64% of the non-fibre carbs are considered “sugars”! Finally, let’s look at Chocolate Pudding Mix, something you definitely don’t want to be eating if you want to stay lean and healthy. A package contains 88g total carbs, 4g fibre and 42g “sugars’. That means that only 50% of the non-fibre carbs are considered “sugars”. Does that mean that eating chocolate pudding (50% “sugars”) is somehow better than eating broccoli (80% “sugars”) or almonds (64% “sugars”)? This is just an example that can be worked out quite simply by preferring vegetables to puddings, but thing about all other foods that are not as intuitively easy to manage and require your assessment of the information provided on the nutritional label to make a decision. It’s a minefield, I agree, but as a professional I ask myself the question and as an educator I feel the obligation to alert you that not everything you see written on a packet of food is what you get from that food. Alessandra Tumolo ttlctrl.co.uk
Posted on: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:09:17 +0000
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