If You Say It’s Healthy, They Will Eat It! (and a lot of it)

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by Chewy

Marketing is a very interesting field. It’s sole purpose is to get you to buy something, regardless of whether you need it, want it or can use it. Statements don’t have to be entirely true as long as there are partial  facts in evidence, no matter how minute or skewed. This is especially true when it comes to manufactured sweets.

Take for example the “fat free” craze. When at it’s height, candy, cookies, ice creams, were all touting the fact that they removed this villain ingredient from the product. What they didn’t disclose was the fact that many of the items were already naturally fat free. Nor was it advertised about the extra sugar they had to use in order to make it palatable. This is when I started reading labels.

This was followed by the “sugar free”  mania. In some instances, instead of cane sugar, chemical sugar substitutes were employed. Subsequent studies showed that some of these were the same caloric amount as the “real” thing resulting in your stomach digesting a laboratory experiment with no positive advantages. The zero calorie versions were no better. Shown to have no effect on weight loss, they may, in actuality, contribute to obesity.

My favorite are the low calorie (as in 100 calorie snacks and cookies) which come pre-portioned for convenience. What a great idea! Now when I eat five of them I know exactly how many calories I’ve eaten. Wasn’t there a lot less guilt when you didn’t know precisely how damaging that binge was?

What’s our latest food fetish? Organic, of course. Organic MUST be healthier, right? The USDA defines organic as ”produced without using most conventional pesticides, fertilizers with synthetic ingredients, bioengineering or ionizing radiation”. Beyond the concern about the use of the word “most” aside, we see from this definition that organic refers only to how the food is farmed. It has nothing to do with what happens to it afterwards. In fact, organic foods can be highly processed (meaning it has been changed in some way from it’s natural form).

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Take for example the beloved chocolate chip cookie. Let’s take that cookie and make it organic. Must be healthy = must be able to eat more! You have your organic flour and organic sugar, both of which can still be white and refined. Yikes! You know what this means? The nutritional value is no different than the regular cookies that cost you significantly less.

Then there is the evil evaporated cane juice. Surely organic brown rice syrup is better! Guess what, it’s still sugar. Put it in a candy bar, carbonated beverage or any other product with no nutritional value and you have the quintessential “organic” junk food.

The lesson learned from this is that we will NEVER be able to eat sweets at the same promotion as fruits and vegetables. And that is the way it is suppose to be. If we were forced to eat dessert at the same level, how enjoyable would it remain (not cookies and cake for dinner AGAIN!)? Enjoy, without guilt, that “icing on the cake” of a meal , dessert, and ignore those who are trying to make it healthy.