Please don't pretend that you are doing us any favours

Food industry and large companies have much control over what we eat. They control what we can buy, what price products are sold at, where they put products on the shelves and in an increasing number of instances, they are encouraging us to eat more and more. Consider for a moment the last time that you went to the petrol station - did someone offer you a discount if you spent some extra cash in there? Or did they offer you 2 for 1 chocolate bars? Did the fast food chain offer an upgrade? Or did you get a better deal at the supermarket if you purchased more? Other examples of this push for consumers to consume more and more include larger companies advertising the unhealthiest burger and breakfast cereal options the most; or heavily discounting the cheaper, poorer quality food items rather than the healthiest before claiming to be holier than thou simply because they offer them on the menu.

All of these are examples of ways in which major companies who claim to be helping Australians eat better with health initiatives are actually making a complete joke of us and laughing all the way to the shareholders meeting. Instead of claiming to market responsibly perhaps it is time to actually do it? So next time the service attendant at the Coles servo offers you 2 for 1 chocolate bars, the McDonalds or Events cinema attendant offers an upgrade perhaps we need to start telling them to stick it.

How to not get fat this Christmas

The time has arrived when we need to be really mindful of our food choices to avoid an extra 5+ kilograms to kick off 2010. Here are the must follows tips for success;
1) Do not skip your training sessions, no matter what. Being “too busy” is a poor excuse
2) Eat a snack an hour before you go to a party
3) Drink vodka, lime and soda
4) Avoid all pastry until Christmas Day
5) If you do overindulge, choose salad or soup for your next meal
6) Snack on Summer fruit
7) Don’t keep extra lollies or chocolates at home
8) Give away as much leftover food as you can
9) Don’t waste your calories on poor quality chocolates, nibbles and pastry
10) Avoid all dips and chips

Giving them the attention they do not deserve

Over the past week there has been much media interest about a new mega burger released by one of the major fast food chains; a burger which contains over 5000mg of sodium (2 1/2 x the recommended daily amount) as well as 26g of saturated fat. The very fact that the major fast food chains are still developing these mega fat and calorie options is evidence enough to show that despite much talk of producing "healthier" options, at the end of the day, their interest is in money making and making high fat products, not improving the health of the country in any way.

The irony is that as the media and health professionals express their fury at such food items, the fast food chains are getting exactly the attention they had hoped for - free advertising. Enough said.......

The big food masquerade

For me, honesty is one of the most important character traits one can have and hence when food companies market certain varieties of food as healthy options, when there is much evidence to suggest otherwise, it frustrates me immensely. Here are the top food masqueraders, quite a few of which are regularly marketed as “healthy options”.
1)Arnott’s Shapes – no biscuit made using palm oil is ever going to be healthy
2)Kellogg Nutra Grain – breakfast cereal should contain fibre, not iron or protein; we get those nutrients from meat
3)Dried fruit – doubles the sugar of regular fruit
4)Cordial – still just sugar and water
5)Fruche – not a true yoghurt
6)Frozen yoghurt - more sugar and less protein than regular yoghurt
7)Rice crackers – at least choose wholegrain if you must have them
8)All Natural Confectionery – lollies are lollies
9)Chicken nuggets – anything crumbed and fried is never going to be good for you or your kids
10)Cadbury Brunch Bars – just another muesli bar even thought they look healthy

The bread uproar - is white really that bad?

For such a simple story, even I was surprised how much interest the recent bread story generated. I guess I just assumed that most people knew that Turkish bread really isn't that good for you! In case you missed it, here is the Updates information that generated the media frenzy last week:

I know that the labels on the packet say that it is low GI and high in fibre but processing a food and then putting all the good stuff back in is never going to make it as good nutritionally as the unprocessed variety. Grains consumed whole, in their natural state contain a wide range of nutrients including Vitamin E, zinc and long chain fats which will always make them nutritionally superior than processed grains. In fact, as a dietitian I look at white bread and think that you may as well choose confectionery for the metabolic impact the food has on our body long term. Here are the commonly eaten white bread varieties and their relative carbohydrate and fibre contents for you to consider;
Bread Type Cal Carbs Fibre
Plain white 146 28.2 1.8
Wonder White 157 26.7 4.2
Helga’s 208 36.6 2.4
Lawson’s 302 53.0 3.4
Turkish 560 110.0 5.5
Sourdough 526 99.6 5.8
Mountain 144 27.5 2.1

Act like a woman, eat like a man

One of the most common food habits that brings a diet undone is the tendency to over do things at social gatherings. Potato chips, pesto dips, cheese and other nibbles contain plenty of calories and are exceptionally easy to overeat. An observation I have made is that men treat these foods very differently than women do. Men rarely plan their social engagements around their food choices, nor do they crowd around the kitchen stuffing their faces with non filling, high fat foods. On the other hand, women can spend hours planning the menu, preparing the food and making a distinct effort to make sure that they get to eat some of the delicious treats they have prepared!

Over the next few weeks as the end of year party season kicks off, practice being exceptionally mindful when it comes to party food behaviours. Try and avoid the same high calorie nibbles that you have eaten a million times before by having a filling snack before you go and if you must indulge, determine how many snacks you will have before you begin eating. Stand away from the food, preferably with skinny people who seem to not eat much and pay particular attention to how much better you feel the next day when you have not subjected yourself to a complete calorie blow out. And if that is not convincing enough, here are your favourite pre-dinner snacks and the calories you will ingest if you eat them.

10 rice crackers + chunky pesto and cashew dip = 2000kJ
5 Jatz and Mersey Valley Cheese = 1100kJ
Large Bag Red Rock Deli Chips = 3500kJ
Large bag of Grain Waves = 3400kJ
½ Brie and 6 water crackers = 1700kJ
30 peanuts = 700kJ

Why “healthy” is a misleading word

For those of you who take an interest in what you eat, and your health in general, new product releases that claim to be the latest and greatest for health and fitness catch our attention In the past few weeks alone we have seen a new high calcium breakfast cereal, no added sugar yoghurt and the product which particularly grabbed my attention, pizza with the Heart Foundation TICK. All of these products claim to be “healthy” choices, based on their individual nutritional characteristics which have a potential selling point with consumers.

Unfortunately from a dietetic perspective, my definition of what is healthy is often very different from a high GI cereal that has calcium added; a yoghurt that contains artificial sweetener or a brand of pizza which may have a TICK but which also contains >90g of total carbohydrate which is the carbohydrate equivalent to 6+ slices of bread.

Another more general example of this can be demonstrated if we consider the nutritional profile of ice cream versus yoghurt. Ice cream is generally thought of as a product that is far less healthy than yoghurt but if you consider that a tub of yoghurt can contain up to 30g of total carbohydrate and >200 calories compared to an ice cream such as Paddle Pop MOO which contains <100 calories and just 20g of total carbohydrate, you can again see that it can be easy to be mislead by products that are routinely put into a “healthy” category.

What is healthy or not for an individual comes down to how many calories the food has; the type of carbohydrate and fat it contains and what else it offers nutritionally, not just one of these characteristics. And like everything in life, if a food seems and tastes too good to still be low in calories and carbohydrates, it usually is.