I came across this article (Nine Health Foods That Aren’t, from the Health section of MSNBC) while browsing the web Sunday. I wasn’t expecting much, and it isn’t much, except solid common sense and what we’ve been blogging about. These guys did a nutritional analysis of various prepared foods from the store, not junk food, but what Pollan would call processed health foods, and the results are amusing. It seems McDonalds isn’t the only place where subliminal super sizing and the judicious use of high fructose corn syrup are used to enhance sales. I wish I had the space to run through the whole list.
Bran muffins – 420 calories, 20 grams fat. This sounds a little thin compared to an English muffin topped with poached egg, ham and cheese, which weighs in at 300 calories and 12 grams of fat. Whew, leave the cheese off mine, and I’ll take two for the price of a bran muffin. The bran muffin is loaded with sweeteners to make it gooey and delicious, plus it’s the size of three regular muffins like your mother would make. You’ve seen these offered as “alternatives” at Dunkin Donut and Noah’s Bagels.
Chicken Wrap – offered in the deli as low carb, the plate size tortilla had twice the carbohydrate as a regular bun, and was covered with mayonnaise to the edge. This health food sandwich was 700 calories and 35 grams fat, compared to a grilled chicken breast sandwich which would be 375 calories and 15 grams fat, roughly half, and available from McDonalds – just skip the fries and shake.
Yoplait yogurt with fruit – it turns out the fruit is mostly fructose. Compared to an equal weight of plain yogurt with your own fruit which reduces the calories from 190 to 110, and cuts the sugar in half.
Caesar salad with chicken – these premixed salads are swimming in fake dressing, on a ready to serve plate. This one had 900 calories with 60 grams of fat. If you grill the chicken and serve on mixed greens tossed with balsamic vinaigrette, it reduces the damage to 400 calories and 20 grams of fat, less than half. Also, in this part of the country this usually uses Napa cabbage as the only green (longer shelf life) so that it wilts less in the dressing. They should call it Caesar Slaw. Yuck.
I won’t bother you with what’s in a fruit smoothie, the generation-X alternative to a chocolate shake. Because the point is, the damage to all these items is in the preparation and storage, not the ingredients. Pollan explains it simply – if your grandmother wouldn’t have bought it in the grocery, don’t eat it. These dishes not only have far more calories than the ingredients they come from, but a lot of the calories are placed to affect the texture and shelf life. Mayonnaise keeps the tortilla from drying and cracking. HFCS glues the muffin together, and prevents mold growth. The yogurt uses fruit preserves instead of fruit to prevent spoilage. The result is a bran muffin at Starbuck’s has more fat than an Egg McMuffin.
I would add one further piece of advice. Don’t assume that a food is healthier just because the manufacturer says it is. This applies to healthy sounding food as well. There are no government standards for freshness and health, all the maker has to show is that it’s non-toxic, just like rat poison. I prefer it that way, actually. If the government started deciding what was healthy for us, fois gras would be replaced with thousand calorie muffins. The founding fathers wisely refused to design a state religion that satisfied everyone, and so it should be with a state diet.
For further reading, consult Eat This, Not That by David Zinczenko.