Health Secrets	UPDATED: Friday, January 12, 2007
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The downside of diet foods

Posted on Monday, January 15, 2007

They aren’t necessarily low-calorie or healthful

By Wendy J. Meyeroff
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

The dollars spent on weight-loss products in the U.S. has risen from $5 billion to $50 billion, a 1,000% increase. Yet when you see the words “fat-free,” “low-fat,” or “low-calorie,” that doesn’t always mean that product will help you lose weight, or that it is good for you.

Misleading names cause confusion
Consider “fat-free.” “If your goal is simply to reduce the amount of fat in your diet, the product can be a good choice. But remember that just because the product has little or no fat doesn’t make it otherwise healthful. It can be high in sugars, for example,” says Bernadette Navarro, R.D., dietitian at Henry Ford Village, a community in Michigan built and managed by Erickson.

The phrase “sugar-free” doesn’t necessarily make it better. “I don’t like anything artificial when it comes to food so I don’t recommend artificial sweeteners. They encourage the taste for sweet without satisfying it,” says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., M.P.H., professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University. “We should recondition ourselves as to what we think of as sweet. A freshly picked apple can hit us as a sweet treat,” adds Walter Willett, M.D., of Harvard’s departments of nutrition and epidemiology.

“One of the big problems with low-calorie entrées is they are very heavy on sodium to help preserve their taste. That can be dangerous if you have high blood pressure, as many older people do. An entrée with 900 or 1,200 mg of sodium is going to use up a lot of your daily allowance, which for many older adults is between 2,000 and 4,000 mg,” says Navarro.

“A low-fat dressing for your salad isn’t necessarily a good choice. The natural oils in most regular salad dressings actually promote lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke,” Willett says.

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Make good diet food choices
“Many diet entrées have the trans fats removed now, so some of them are pretty healthful. But I wouldn’t call them ‘diet’ foods, just prepared foods,” says Willett.

It is possible to find good lean foods, but it takes work. “You have to learn to read labels and it isn’t easy,” says Navarro, who has held label reading seminars at Henry Ford Village.

“Let’s say you are trying to cut down on carbohydrates and the label reads 25% next to the carbohydrate listing. That does NOT mean this product is only 25% carbohydrates; it means it contains 25% of your entire daily allowance of carbohydrates. What is also confusing is that 25% is usually based on a 2,000- calorie/daily diet, and most older people only need 1,500 calories daily,” says Navarro.

“When it comes to carbohydrates, I always pay attention to their allotment in relation to the fiber in that product. If there are more than 8 grams of carbohydrates for each gram of fiber, that’s too high,” says Willett.

Is diet your real goal?
Trying to lose weight isn’t the only reason people grab diet products. “As people get older, preparing their own meals gets more difficult, for a number of reasons,” says Navarro. Among the most common: they are often eating alone and don’t enjoy cooking for one.

If that is your motivation for grabbing that “lean” entrée ask yourself: do you really have to eat alone? Go to senior centers for one meal, like lunch. Set up a pot luck dinner, in which once a week you gather in someone’s home and cook together, or you each bring something. Just work out the menu ahead, so you don’t end up with three courses of lasagna and no salad. You can find such social groups on the Internet, or talk to your neighbors and religious groups.

Remember moderation
Remember, diet food shouldn’t be an excuse to splurge. If you figure you can eat twice as much of that low-fat ice cream because it is low-fat, you are wrong…you still have to watch your portion sizes. Same thing if you use your diet lunch as an excuse to pig out at dinner. In such scenarios, you will gain weight—especially if your activity level is decreased.

“When I see people, I ask what they have been eating. If they eat dinner regularly in one of the community’s restaurants, I know their dinner nutrients are balanced. So I find out what they are eating for breakfast and lunch. Then we review their food choices,” says Roland Lascari, medical director for Cedar Crest, an Erickson community in New Jersey.

“Weight is about calorie balance. If the calories you eat exceed the ones you use up, you will gain weight,” says Nestle.

“We really don’t need diet foods to be healthy or control weight. The natural foods are all we need to stay healthy,” Willett adds.