Fortified Fakery: Why Added Vitamins Don’t Redeem Junk Food

You often see adverts that boast the new-found wellness properties of a sugary cereal, which declares that the diabetes-inducing breakfast has been ‘fortified with 11 essential vitamins and minerals-part of a complete breakfast!’ The food industry would have us believe this makes the food better for us. However, in the same way that spraying perfume at the dump doesn’t make the rubbish go away, fortified junk foods are still junk.

Food manufacturers are playing fast and loose with the terms “functional food” and “functionally enhanced food”, which is putting your wellbeing at risk. As Michael Pollan argued in his January 2007 New York Times Magazine story, the nutrient fortification of everything implies that a food itself is nutritious, and this is the very epitome of the dangerous trend Pollan referred to as “nutritionism”. Can a food that is dysfunctional to begin with be made functional with the addition of vitamins and minerals? Or is it, to borrow a metaphor, like putting lipstick on a pig?

As there isn’t a commonly accepted definition of a functional food, we’re getting into all kinds of trouble. Functional food should be a term used to describe a food that is of intrinsic nutritional value, which, when nutrients are added for some specific and measurable function, becomes enhanced.  It makes sense that food cannot be “functional” if the function in question cannot be specified or measured.

Take a dressing or a spread that has been made with monounsaturated oils and/or omega-3 polyunsaturated oils. This food has intrinsic nutritional value; heart health. Now, if manufacturers were to add lipid-lowering plant sterols to the dressing or spread, it would qualify as a functional food. The addition has been directed at a discrete and measurable function; plant sterols can lower LDL cholesterol. Another good example would be adding probiotic bacteria to organic, fat-free, plain yoghurt.

Therefore, fortification should not be used to exonerate nutrition that is missing in the food itself. Adding vitamins to fizzy drinks or sweetened water does not redeem the product, it only makes it easier to market to unsuspecting parents. The food industry might like you to believe that enough nutrients at the end of a long ingredient list of junk confer a salutary glow, but doing so would be, in a word, dysfunctional.

Fortified Fakery: Why Added Vitamins Don’t Redeem Junk Food

Categories: Fortified, Functional, junk

The Secrets About So Called ‘Healthy’ Fast Food

With a population becoming ever more aware of the importance of losing weight and making healthy food choices, fast food retailers are having to up their game. Many of them are now offering healthier alternatives to the more fat-laden items on their menus.

Three major chains in particular have announced serious changes to their menu. McDonalds is now offering a yolk-free version of their usual Egg McMuffin breakfast food, while Burger King has unveiled a turkey meat burger which the food industry has hailed as a ‘game changer’. Cracker Barrel, which currently provides hearty family favourites such as macaroni cheese and fried chicken, with unknown calorific contents, has now started rolling out a lower calorie menu with meals containing fewer than 600 calories.

Is this sudden surge of healthy food motivated by conscience on the part of the retailers? Are they suddenly so concerned for your wellbeing that they make wellness a priority over profits? The simple answer is – no. The fast food industry has simply seen the enormous money-making potential of saddling itself with some healthy credentials.

Although these healthy dishes are not expected to sell well (who goes to fast food restaurants to eat healthy food, after all?), and historical precedent shows that people will almost always choose flavour over health, the companies still benefit from the kudos and good reputation associated with being seen to make an attempt to provide a healthier offering.

If customers think of the restaurant as healthy, it will decrease the amount of guilt associated with visiting and make them more likely to choose that particular restaurant to visit. By association, people think of the rest of the menu as healthier purely because they have heard about a healthy offering produced by a particular restaurant.

Even those who visit the restaurant with the aim of eating a healthy item from the menu are often lured by something less healthy once they are inside the venue and confronted with the choice.

Google+
The Secrets About So Called ‘Healthy’ Fast Food

Categories: fast, Food, junk