In the 1990s the comedian Jon Lovitz used to do a character on Saturday Night Live called The Pathological Liar. This character just told one outrageous lie after another usually culminating in references to his wife, the actress Morgan Fairchild, who was of course not his wife.
I feel the same way about “healthy” packaged foods. They can name themselves healthy, they can call themselves natural because of how loose the definition is. They can call themselves kosher because quite simply the Torah does not deal with Red #40.
Now oddly enough for all my protestations about the need for healthier food, I don’t really have a huge issue with Trix rainbow cereal or Cocoa Puffs or Pop Tarts. The products are not especially healthy, but they also aren’t pretending to be healthy.
What makes me crazy is the food that is pretending to be healthy but isn’t and the good parents who pay extra to feed their children something that they think is lower in sugar and better for them, who are being duped.
If you have to trick someone into buying your product, you have a bad product.
A recent article in Mother Jones asked the question, What do you think would be healthier. A Natures Path Wildberry Acai toaster pastry or a S’mores flavored pop tart. How about a slice of gluten free cinnamon raisin bread vs a Pillsbury cinnamon roll (OK the cinnamon roll loses here, but not by much, it has less than 1 tsp more sugar than the bread, oh and it has less than HALF the sugar in the oatmeal…and it has FROSTING on it.).
And they did not even cover my favorite junk food topic, the snack bar. Next time you are in the grocery store grab a Snickers bar (something no self respecting mom would let a preschooler snack on) and go to the “granola bar” or other healthy fruit and nut bar section and compare sugar, fat, sodium and calories. No really. My husband was just horrified.
So you need to read the labels. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
One teaspoon of sugar contains about 4g of sugar (one is weight and one is volume so…its not perfect). So 12 grams of sugar is about 1 tablespoon. One cup of sugar is 16 tablespoons. So if something has 24 grams of sugar it has two tablespoons of sugar or 1/8 of a cup of sugar. The cinnamon roll has less than one tablespoon of sugar. The oatmeal has close to two tablespoons.
OK now that you have the idea read the back of that juice box. Any juice box.
Reading boxes has led us to one brand of snack bar, one brand of chips and a strong aversion to fruit juice.
If you would like to see the video and read all about the findings of the Mother Jones group that simply read the boxes, you can read the article at the link below.
