Watch out for those health claims

I have been reading Michael Pollan's book called "In Defense of Food" and one of things he wrote made me chuckle:

"Yet as a general rule, it's a whole lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a raw potato or a carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthy foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over in cereal the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming their new found "whole grain goodness" to the rafters. Watch out for those health claims."

TK: Now we find that consumers are being beguiled by all manner of health claims and are eating so many "good for you" products that they are relentlessly adding to their girth. One Farm Bureau educational session that I missed in New Orleans talked about functional foods. From a Farm Bureau press release:

NEW ORLEANS, January 14, 2008 – An overload of health and nutrition information that many consumers find confusing and inconsistent is a primary cause of Americans’ ever-expanding waistlines, nutrition expert Rachel Cheatham said at a seminar during the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 89th annual conference.

Cheatham is director of science and health communications for the International Food Information Council, which works to bridge the gap between science and communications by collecting and circulating scientific information on food safety, nutrition and health.

The results of an extensive survey conducted by IFIC via the Internet in February 2007 show that 42 percent of survey respondents feel that the food and health information they receive from various sources is contradictory. Slightly more than 30 percent said it was inconsistent.

“This really is the issue,” Cheatham explained. “There is an overload of information. How do we package this information so that people understand it and know what to do with it?”

The survey results indicate very few people understand or apply the concept of energy balance, in which calories consumed and calories used are treated as an equation that results in weight maintenance, or depending on the individual’s goals, weight loss or gain. Almost half of the survey respondents said they don’t balance the calories they take in with the calories they use, while 16 percent said they do increase their exercise to compensate for eating more than usual.

“Very few people – only 16 percent – are saying ‘I get it,’” Cheatham said. “If we could only get consumers to understand if they take in 2,000 calories per day, for example, and burn 2,000 calories, their weight would be stable. We encourage people to know this, so they can do the basic math and take control of their weight.”

However, she acknowledged that calorie counting is a hard sell.

People’s lack of self-awareness, in terms of what they weigh, what their body mass index is and what it should be, is also an obstacle to getting consumers to think more about nutrition and exercise.

Almost a quarter of consumers who view themselves as being at an ideal weight are actually overweight, according to the survey. Seventy-three percent who think they’re overweight are actually obese.

“As we become more overweight as a society, we’re losing track of ourselves,” Cheatham said.

She added that the more obese and overweight people an individual is surrounded by, the less likely it is he or she will be concerned about his or her weight.

Cheatham emphasized there are simple tools to help consumers be more mindful about what they’re eating. She pointed out that most boxed and canned products carry a nutrition label detailing the calories, fat, fiber and nutrients per serving.

MyPyramid.gov helps computer users figure out how many calories they need per day and also allows them to input what foods they’ve eaten to make sure they’re meeting good health guidelines established by the federal government, such as eating a minimum of five servings of fruits and vegetables daily.

The survey results are available at www.ific.org.

TK: It might also work to tell people to eat less of a particular food (soda, high sugar foods) and more fruits and vegetables. At least we have one side of the equation with "Fruits and Veggies - More Matters."