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The Skinny on Fat-Free: Why You May Be Better Off with the Real Thing
We've all seen the ads, and we've all seen, even bought, the products being rolled out by the thousands, proclaiming they're either low-fat or no-fat. And, prodded by the food manufacturers and the government, we dutifully toss out our butter, our sour cream, our dressings, and stock our pantries with healthy stuff.
And there's plenty of it out there. Fat-free milk? Easy. Low-fat yogurt? No problem. "Skinny" muffins and cereals and candies and coffee drinks and pretty much anything else you can think of? Done. Just one tiny thing, though. When you take something (fat) out, you have to put something else in. And while low-fat foods may contain no actual fat, many of them do contain large quantities of . . . sugar. But wait, aren't we supposed to also be cutting out the sugar? The doctors tell us to, the "experts" say we should, even the government is banging the "cut the sugar" drum. Why? Because consuming lots of sugar causes an insulin response, and insulin, especially lots of it, transports sugar to your fat cells for storage. I'd be the last person to question the logic of the food companies and the government agencies charged with protecting our health, mostly because I always assume they don't do anything logically in the first place, but seriously, did no one consider the possibility that replacing fat with sugar was, to use the technical term, stupid? The stupidity doesn't stop there, though. Some food and drink companies use artificial sweeteners as fat replacers, shying away from adding copious amounts of sugar to their products. But as I showed in a previous article, researchers are finding that our bodies process sweet ingredients in the same way, whether they're real sugar or fake. And sometimes, carbohydrate-based fat substitutes are used in these products, including guar gum, xanthan gum, carrageenan, modified food starch, oat fiber, and other substances. They're used in baked goods, yogurts, low-fat puddings, processed meats, even salad dressings and sauces. That would be better than using sugar, right? Maybe not. David Ludwig, director of the obesity clinic at Children's Hospital Boston, says calories from processed carbohydrates used as fat replacers are not the same as calories from fat, protein, or complex carbohydrates: "They may cause a hormonal change that stimulates hunger and leads to overeating," he says, "especially in environments where food is abundant. ..." Like, well, here. Perhaps the most talked-about fat replacement is Olestra, which causes such physical problems as abdominal cramping and very sudden, and surprising, trips to the bathroom. Olestra also inhibits the absorption of some vitamins, so much so that in 1998 the FDA began requiring manufacturers of the snack products made with Olestra to not only put a warning on the package about the embarrassing side effects, but also to add extra vitamins A, D, E and K to the product to make up for that inhibited absorption rate. (Of course, the FDA being the federal agency that it is, it removed the requirement for a warning label after being assured of the product's safety. By Procter and Gamble. The company that made Olestra at the time.) But at least if you were willing to put up with the physical effects and the vitamin loss, you could expect to lose weight, right? Well, sort of. A letter to the editor published in the July 2003 edition of the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition tells of a 13-year-old boy who developed abdominal cramps, severe back pain, "explosive" diarrhea, and gas after eating a few potato chips containing Olestra. It continues: "After 4.5 months, a 23-pound weight loss, and marked abdominal distention, the patient underwent colectomy." That is, all or part of his colon was removed. So, yes, weight loss was possible with that fat substitute, although perhaps not the way the child or his family might have wanted it to happen. The American Heart Association has said that fat replacers are only modestly beneficial, since most people who use them fail to lose weight. A study published recently in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, showed that while 90 per cent of the U.S. adult population consumed low- or reduced-fat foods and beverages, many of which contain fat substitutes, the number of overweight individuals continued to increase. The author, Judith Wylie-Rosett, a member of the association's Nutrition Committee, wrote, "The bottom line is that foods made with fat substitutes, used in moderation, may provide some flexibility in food selection, but are not an effective strategy on their own for weight control. Often, reduced-fat versions of products have the same or even more calories than their full-fat versions." And a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition as long ago as 1996 found that subjects given food with fat replacements, specifically Olestra, showed no real difference in eating patterns when they reduced their fat intake from 40 to 30 percent of calories, but when they cut back on fat intake to 20 percent, they actually ate more, even the next day, to compensate for the lost fat calories. More importantly, they found that "The highly palatable nature of high-fat foods is thought to promote hyperphagia." Hyperphagia? The fancy term for overeating. It's exactly that palatable nature that food chemists have been busily trying to replicate in their fake fats. And they seem to be doing a great job with making them palatable; in fact, they may have done too good a job. For years, scientists believed that fat only provides texture to foods, what's known as "mouth feel," and that pure fat itself doesn't have any taste. But research conducted at Purdue University found that humans not only can taste fat, it provokes a physical response: Blood fat levels rose when subjects simply put fat into their mouths. So, back to the logic: Fat replacers are designed to mimic the "mouth feel" of actual fat, and that perception of eating actual fat is thought to promote overeating. Still, I'm sorry to say that the stupidity doesn't end there. The whole "fat is bad" thing? It most likely was never real to begin with. In "The Soft Science of Dietary Fat," published in the journal Science, Volume 291, March 30, 2001, author Gary Taubes notes that the obesity epidemic "occurred just as the government began bombarding Americans with the low-fat message," which, he says, "suggests the possibility, however distant, that low-fat diets might have unintended consequences--among them, weight gain." The article also details the rise of the 'fat is bad' mantra adopted by pretty much everyone in this country and says, no surprise, that the science behind the mantra is lacking but the politics and money, not so much. In fact, Taubes writes, "It was Senator George McGovern's bipartisan, nonlegislative Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs--and, to be precise, a handful of McGovern's staff members--that almost single-handedly changed nutritional policy in this country and initiated the process of turning the dietary fat hypothesis into dogma." Also in the article are these two telling comments: first, that men with very low cholesterol levels, a result of a low-fat diet, seem prone to premature death; below 160 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl), the lower the cholesterol level, the shorter the lifespan. And second, Taubes notes that a low-fat diet is, by definition, a high-carbohydrate diet, "just as a low-fat cookie or low-fat yogurt are, by definition, high in carbohydrates." Carbs, you know. The things that can make us fat. To sum up, fat replacers are everywhere, yet by all accounts they don't actually make you eat any less; in fact, they may even make you eat more. And foods containing them also contain lots of sugar and other carbohydrates, which can also contribute to weight gain, which is most likely what you were trying to avoid in the first place by eating low on the fat totem pole. So why are you eating low fat? Because the experts say we should, because they care about our health. No, not really. They care about their bottom line, not ours. Fat substitutes are cheaper to use than real fat. It's that simple. They can replace the real with the fake, as they do with sweeteners, with salt, with fake, manufactured flavors (more on that in my next article), and so on. And I've saved the best fat replacer for last as an example of what companies will put in our food to make our taste buds happy while expanding their own bottom lines. The product is called Methocel MX, and its manufacturer has posted a news release on its website saying the product "received the prestigious 2009 Ringier Award for Food & Beverage Technological Innovation for helping to reduce the overall fat content of food products while keeping the ingredient costs within control." The release goes on to say the product is used in meats such as sausages, frankfurters and veggie burgers (!), and in bakery products such as muffins and cakes. The sales pitch ends this way: "Customers can also benefit from reduced ingredient costs by using Methocel MX," just in case we didn't get their point about saving money the first time. The company that makes it? Dow Chemical. The ingredients in Methocel MX? Dow has very helpfully posted the MSDS, or material safety data sheet, on its website, and that document shows it's made of cellulose, methyl ether, water, and sodium chloride. Cellulose is the main component of plant cell walls and what gives wood its strength. So far, not too bad, I guess. And water, okay, no problem. And sodium chloride is table salt (although not real salt, just fyi). And the MSDS notes that the product "should" be safe, or at least no adverse effects are "anticipated." And on its product answer center page, Dow says Methocel's raw materials are "derived from petroleum, plant and inorganic sources." We know which one is the plant source, and sodium chloride is an inorganic compound (I looked it up), which leaves us methyl ether for the petroleum category, which would explain why the MSDS also notes that the product is liable to be, well, explosive. The real bottom line on fat replacers? They're useless at best, but they save money for the food industry, and there may well have never been any reason to avoid (real) fat in the first place, and in at least one case, they might explode. Better living through chemistry, indeed. For your reading pleasure:
http://www.nasw.org/awards/2001/The%20soft%20science.pdf Similar Articles by Lynn Stratton The following articles contain content that is similar to this article, The Skinny on Fat-Free: Why You May Be Better Off with the Real Thing:
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