Why Low Fat Foods can be Bad for You

When looking around your local super market you often see the food and drinks that have bold colourful labels stating them to be fat and sugar free, low fat and 'Light/lite.' These labels give products a 'halo effect', where the consumer thinks it's healthier and buys it rather than choosing another brand that doesn't feature it. However some of these products aren't as healthy as they may look, as a product that says it's low in fat can contain high levels of sugar which if not burnt off will be stored as fat on the body anyway! It's so important to look beyond the decorative front labels and check out what's actually in the ingredients list on the back, before making your final decision. The ingredients are listed in order of amount, so if the first ingredient listed is sugar than that product's largest ingredient is sugar and best avoided. People tend to over eat on these products as they are deemed healthy and unwittingly take even more calories on board than if they went for the more unhealthier option as they normally eat less of it. It can't be a coincidence that these 'healthier' foods came out shortly before the obesity epidemic started as people started to eat less fat and protein and move onto more cheaper and processed foods which were higher in sugar and salt. For a product to be called light/lite it must contain 30% less fat or calories than the standard version but this doesn't guarantee it being healthy as a packet of light/lite crisps can contain the same amount of fat or calories compared to the standard version of another brand. You also have to be careful when checking the nutritional label as the manufactures often put fat/sugar grams per 100g/100ml but the product maybe 250g or 250ml so you would have to double or even triple the amount to get the true amount of fat and sugar that's in it if you plan to consume the whole product at once. For a product to be called 'low fat' it must contain less than 3g of fat per 100g for food or 1.5g of fat per 100ml for drinks. However many of these so called 'low fat' products are loaded with sugar and therefore will be high in calories. To check if a product is high in sugar when checking the nutritional label if the sugar content is higher than 15g per 100g consider it high and if it's less than 5g per 100g you can consider it low. 'Fat-free' foods must contain less than 0.5g fat per 100g but not always will be healthy as this label can be put on foods that don't even contain fat in the first place such as sweets! So the next time you go shopping look beyond the fancy healthy looking packaging and labels and look at the ingredient label at the back for the truth. Please see below on examples of these so called 'healthy' products but are loaded with sugar. These measurements are in teaspoons:- Marks & Spencer's Peri Peri Chicken- 3.4 Marks & Spencer's Sweet and Sour Chicken -4 Blue Berry Drinking Yoghurt- 6.5 Onken Fat Free Strawberry Yoghurt per 150g serving- 4.8. Onken Fat Free Vanilla Yoghurt per 150g serving- 4.5 Yeo Valley 0% Fat Orange, Carrot and Mango Yoghurt- 4.7. Waitrose Low Fat Black Cherry Yoghurt-4.6 Muller Light Cherry Yoghurt 175g pot-2.8 Shape 0% Fat Raspberry Yogurt 120g pot-2.6. Weight Watchers Strawberry and White Chocolate Flavour Mousse-2.6. Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino 250ml bottle- 6.4. Galaxy Milk 200ml bottle- 6.3. Special K per 30g serving with milk-2.8. Special K Creamy Berry Crunch per 30g serving with milk-3.0