What 11 buzz words on 'health foods' really mean

NBC

• Reading food labels can be misleading if you don't know what to look out for. 
• "Low-fat" and "fat-free" foods are often loaded with sugar and other additives to make the product taste good.
• Keep an eye out for the 56 different names for sugar on nutrition labels.

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There is no decency in the way junk food companies do their marketing.

All they care about is profit and they seem willing to sacrifice even children’s health for their own monetary gain.

Here are the top 11 biggest lies of the junk food industry.

Low-fat or fat-free

DreamWorks

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 most of these products are not healthy at all.

Foods that have had the fat removed from them typically do not taste as good as the full-fat versions. Few people want to eat them.

For this reason, food producers load these products with added sugar and other additives (1).

It is now known that fat has been unfairly demonized while growing evidence has been revealing the dangers of added sugar.

What this means is that "low-fat" foods are usually much worse than their "regular" counterparts.

Trans fat-free

WikiMedia Commons

Processed foods often have "trans fat-free" on the label. This doesn't necessarily have to be true.

As long as a product contains fewer than 0.5 grams of trans fats per serving, they are allowed to put this on the label (2).

Make sure to check the ingredients list. If the word "hydrogenated" appears anywhere on the label, then it contains trans fats.

It's actually not uncommon to find hydrogenated fats in products that are labeled trans fat-free.

Includes whole grains

Flickr/avlxyz

Over the past few decades, consumers have been led to believe that whole grains are among the healthiest foods they can eat.

I agree 100% that whole grains are better than refined grains, although there is no evidence that eating whole grains is healthier than no grains at all.

That said, processed foods like cereals often claim to include whole grains. The problem is that whole grains aren't always "whole." The grains have been pulverized into very fine flour (3, 4).

They may contain all the ingredients from the grain, but the resistance to quick digestion is lost and these grains might spike your blood sugar just as fast as their refined counterparts (5).

Plus, even if a product has small amounts of whole grains in it, chances are that it contains a ton of other very harmful ingredients like sugar and high-fructose corn syrup.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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