Nutrition-Facts Labels
About sixty years ago, when I was a teenager, I was one of the few people who read food labels. I was taught to do so by my father, Abraham Chuckrow, who was a bacteriologist and chemist and worked as a food inspector. He warned me to avoid foods with artificial color—especially red dye, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, and bleached white flour. At that time he insisted that the red dye then commonly used for coloring foods would eventually be proven to cause cancer. It was not until decades later that his assertion was borne out.
Recently, a new type of nutritional labeling became mandatory. Almost every food product now has a list entitled “Nutrition Facts” in addition to a list ingredients The purpose is to give the consumer standardized information in a useful, non-misleading form. The older style of nutrition labeling permitted manufacturers the option of contriving a portion size so unrealistically small that calories and salt content appeared to be very low. Previously, even salted peanuts were permitted to be labeled “low-salt” if manufacturers made the portion size small enough. Now the portions are standardized so that different products can be compared without a calculator.
One of the nutrition facts that appears first is “calories from fat.” Nutritionists frequently advise people to reject foods whose percentage calories from fat is high. Whereas it is beneficial to know the grams of fat and number of calories contained in a food whose fat is, at best, valueless, the percentage of calories from fat is not a meaningful number. For example, consider packaged, sliced ham, labeled 97% fat-free. Right now we will not negatively focus on its high salt and nitrate content but only consider fat. A one-slice portion contains a negligible amount of fat (1 g), but the percentage of calories from fat is quite high (33%) because the remaining calories are essentially from protein and, thus, relatively low. Thus, percentage of calories from fat is not meaningful. What counts is the amount of fat itself, the calories it provides, and whether that fat is nutritious, non-nutritious, or harmful. Therefore, pay no attention to the percentage of calories from fat.
Another problem is that nutrition labels such as the one below tout the phrase all-natural even though the product contains one or more unnatural ingredients.
It is interesting to note that “nutrition facts” labels list , partially hydrogenated fat content not as , saturated fat, but, by subtraction, as , unsaturated fat:
Finally, it should be noted that some labels have self-contradictory information. The following label shows more sugar than carbohydrate, which is impossible because sugar is a form of carbohydrate:
Some errors may not be an attempt to mislead the consumer but simply carelessness on the part of those who provide the information. In any case, do not assume that such information is always correct.
The above article is from Robert Chuckrow, The Intelligent Dieter’s Guide, Rising Mist Publications, Briarcliff Manor, NY, 1997, pp. 24–25.
©Copyright 1997 by Robert Chuckrow
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