With tens of thousands of products in a typical supermarket, it’s ironic that it’s harder than ever to figure out the healthiest food options. What to Eat by Marion Nestle is a nutritionist’s guide to cutting through the hype and navigating through the supermarket in order to get the healthiest food.
At 624 pages, it does attempt to be comprehensive, perhaps more comprehensive than the average reader has patience for. And as the title foreshadows, it does have a bossy tone. But it’s a great resource for learning how to interpret all the health claims you see on foods.
Nestle shows you should take any nutritional claims on foods with a grain of salt, if you’ll pardon the expression. The best foods, fruits and vegetables, don’t have any labels or food claims at all. Many health claims are red herrings, such as claims on vegetable oils that they contain zero cholesterol–no vegetable oils contain cholesterol! “All-Natural”? Turns out there’s a lot you can do to meat and still label it “all-natural.”
Ultimately, Nestle reveals how deeply manipulative food packaging and marketing is. Companies manipulate serving sizes, make questionable health claims, all in an effort to get you to buy and eat more. Energy bars? Candy with added vitamins. Energy drinks? Sugar water with added vitamins. Granola bars? Candy bars with a health varnish.
Her chapters on fish and baby formulas are especially instructive in helping to separate health claims from facts and health benefits versus benefits to the environnment. If you’re confused about the different kinds of fats and how they affect your health, her chapters on dairy and oils are invaluable.
What intrigued me most was her assertion in the introduction that supermarkets are designed to have you look at as many products as possible. The aisles are as long as can be made without people complaining, and necessities such as dairy are placed as far from the entrance as possible to force you to look at more products. To make more money, food companies and supermarkets need you to buy more “value added” food, meaning processed or branded so as to convince you it’s worth spending more money for them.
Her answer? Disregard health claims, read the nutrition facts and ingredient lists, and look for sugars and added fats. Write to politicians to tell them you want more truth in labeling.
My answer? Learn to cook your own food. It’s healthier, more satisfying, and doesn’t need to take more time than prepared food. Get a sharp, good knife. Learn how to cut an onion. Cook your own food, and you can cut out all that oil and sugar and eat better.
UPDATE: Nestle has a regular column in the San Francisco Chronicle. This week, she’s writing about the “Smart Choices” food program which has the collaboration of the American Dietetic Association and the American Heart Association, as well as members of the American Society of Nutrition. This program purports to help consumers find better choices, but the qualifications allow so much in sugar, sodium and fat that for most processed food you might have trouble telling the difference between the smart and not-so-smart choices. Marketing at work!
