62% of Foods Targeting Children That Appear Healthful – Are Not!

A new Canadian study suggests that foods targeting children that may appear healthful, but are not, appeared in the Time Magazine article “The Trouble with Healthy Kid Foods” last week.[1] The study excluded obvious junk foods and found that 62% of foods with a positive health claim are actually of “poor nutritional quality”.

The study used the guidelines for children’s diets set forth by the Washington-based nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and adapted from guidelines by the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity.

The article promotes the guidelines set forth by the CSPI, but the writer doesn’t question whether these guidelines are truly sufficient to make educated food choices. The CSPI has over-simplified the process of reading nutrition fact labels. It recommends that children do not consume foods that contain more than 35% of its calories from fat, nor 35% of its total weight in sugar.

Most people look for low fat food and don’t bother to notice how much sugar is in a single serving. I just realized the other day that my favorite Stonyfield low fat vanilla yogurt has 29g of sugar per serving! Although that is only 13% of the total weight of a single serving, it still seems high when a 57g Snickers Bar also has 29g of sugar. Bottom line – our bodies turn sugar into fat.

So should we eat yogurt with a fairly high content of sugar or a whole grain product that has less sugar but higher fat? What the Time Magazine article and the CSPI don’t examine is the quality of the fat. There are good fats (essentially fatty acids), bad fats (saturated fats), and really bad fats (trans fats).

For example, omega-3 fatty acids by definition, are an essential fatty acid. This means that our body cannot survive without them and cannot produce them. The only way for us to get omega-3s is to consume them from food (either fish or plants such as flaxseed, soy, and some nuts and seeds).

I know this makes reading a nutrition facts panel a bit more complicated, but just as important as noting the sugar level, it is also important to consider what types of fat you are consuming, not just how much.