One of the side effects of the “war” on fat was a plethora of processed products with reduced amounts of fat. These products typically have labels saying “low-fat” – “reduced fat” or “fat-free” The problem is that these products are not healthy at all. Foods that have had the fat removed from them taste like cardboard, no one would want to eat them. For this reason, these foods are usually loaded with sugar, artificial sweeteners or other unnatural chemicals. We now know that fat is harmless and sugar is bad. What this means is that the “low-fat” foods are usually much, much worse than their “regular” counterparts. Bottom Line: If a product has the words “low-fat” or anything similar on the label, then it’s probably bad for you.
Unfortunately, most people don’t even read ingredients lists before making a purchase. But even for those who do, food manufacturers still have ways of disguising the true contents of their products. On ingredients lists, the ingredient that is most of is listed first. The one that is second most of is second, etc. If you see sugar in the first few spots, then you know that the product is loaded with sugar. However, food manufacturers often put different “types” of sugar in their products. A food may contain “sugar,” “high fructose corn syrup” and “evaporated cane juice” – all different names for the exact same thing… sugar. This way, they can have some other healthier sounding ingredient number one on the list, but if you were to add the amounts of these three different types of sugar, sugar would be at the top. This is a clever way to mask the true amount of refined sugar in processed foods.Bottom Line: Make sure to check whether a product contains more than one type of sugar, in that case the sugar may really be among the top ingredients.
