SEEING THROUGH SNEAKY ADVERTISING
Posted on September 13, 2012 by Sharon Ball, One of Thousands of Health and Fitness Coaches on Noomii.
Often we are taken in by advertising hype and do not understand how advertisers go out of their way to mislead us.
It really upsets me to see advertising that makes food seem like something it is not. For instance there is a “fat free” chocolate cookie whose claim to fame is the fat free label. Now, it does taste OK but then so does an Oreo cookie. Yes, the Oreo cookie has 2.3 grams of fat. It also has 4.7 grams of sugar with a total of 8.33 grams total carbs. The fat free cookie has minimal fat but has 6.8 grams of sugar and 12.9 grams total carbs. And guess what, each cookie has exactly 55 calories. So will eating those fat free cookies help you lose weight? Only if you don’t eat too many and watch your calorie count. Will the Oreos help you lose weight? Yes, if you don’t eat too many and watch your calorie count. Sugar free candy also sounds like something you could eat on a diet and not gain weight, right? Sugar free candy is often sweetened with a sugar alcohol called sorbitol which has the same number of calories as sugar; it just is metabolized more slowly so it might have an advantage if you are diabetic. Again, it depends on how much of it you eat and what your overall caloric intake is. One thing to note is that if you eat too much of foods with sugar alcohol, they can cause diarrhea, bloating, and weight gain.
Sometimes I will see a product that is naturally fat free because it is made from sugar such as flavored gelatin. And it will have a banner on it that states “cholesterol free.” Any similar brand of that same product will also be cholesterol free because it has never and will never have any fat in it. I could advertise carrots as “cholesterol free” but it seems kind of silly. Carrots and vegetables in general are cholesterol free because of what they are. The only purpose of cholesterol free on the label is to try to make us see a product as healthier than what it is. Flavored gelatin is full of sugar or full of artificial sweeteners. But you don’t see a banner on the box that says “full of sugar” or “full of artificial sweeteners”.
A well known brand of grape juice offers a “light” version with fewer calories than their regular version but if you check the ingredients it contains 40% juice and 60% water plus ingredients such as Calcium Gluconate, Malic Acid, Natural Flavor, Sodium Citrate, Grape Skin Extract, Ascorbic Acid), Calcium Lactate, Sucralose (Splenda), Acesulfame Potassium. A healthier do it yourself version would be to buy the regular juice and mix it half juice and half water. Another well known brand of chocolate chip cookies saves you only 20 calories per cookie and adds two extra sugar ingredients and one extra filler instead of the fat. How about a well known brand of “No Sugar Added” ice cream. This is one that I frequently bought myself until I learned that instead of sugar I was getting 16 additional additives, six of which are artificial sweeteners. From now on I’ll eat the regular stuff that is made out of real ingredients such as cream, eggs, and sugar and just eat less of it. The moral of all this is to not believe everything you read, educate yourself and read and interpret the food labels yourself.
