Here's
an option for food manufacturers who don't want to disclose all that sugar they
use: Use less.
Food labels are changing.
In the past, you could only see how much total sugar was in your
food. That included sugars naturally occurring in healthy, whole foods — like
lactose in milk — alongside extra sugars like sucrose or high fructose corn
syrup, which aren’t so healthy.
But the Food and Drug Administration just announced that in the near future, labels will specify
the amount of added sugars in packaged products. That makes it
easier to spot the sugars you should limit in your diet.
Will this change America’s eating habits and health for the
better? I hope so.
But it might not.
The new labels could benefit consumers in two ways. First, and perhaps most obviously, health-conscious eaters may read the labels and select healthier food choices. That would be welcome.
But there’s another way the new labels might help. Instead of
clueing shoppers in to how sugar-laden some of their favorite products are,
manufacturers may actually reformulate foods to remove some of that sugar. That
would be ideal.
Indeed, it would benefit all eaters, regardless of whether they
read labels.
But there are other options.
Food manufacturers could replace sucrose, high fructose corn
syrup, and other unhealthy sweeteners with other artificial sweeteners or
sweet, refined products that don’t count as “added sugars” but may not be any
better for you.
Some manufacturers of “healthy” junk food already do this. Have
you ever seen cake that claims it’s sugar-free and “fruit juice sweetened”?
Sure, if you boil fruit juice down enough, it will eventually
become concentrated enough to sweeten a slice of cake. To your body, though,
that’s still sugar — even if it originated from fruit juice.
It appears the government is hip to this possibility.
Regulators are defining “added sugars” to include a long list of
sweeteners, including obvious ones like brown sugar, honey, and molasses, as
well as less obvious ones like “fruit juice concentrates.”
But you can be sure
manufacturers will be searching for another workaround.
Or here’s another possibility: They can reduce serving sizes.
If one serving of a product contains 20 grams of added sugars,
that might raise some eyebrows among health-conscious shoppers. But what if the
manufacturer cuts the “serving size” in half? Now a serving only contains 10
grams of added sugars — which looks much better.
Only, nobody actually eats just one of the new miniature
servings.
Granola is the poster child for this. Check out the nutrition
labels for granola next time you’re in the store. The sugars listed may be in
the single digits, but the serving sizes are often as small as half a cup or
three-quarters of a cup. Who eats only half a cup of granola?
Fortunately, the new labels are supposed to use sizes that
reflect
In short, the new labels represent an opportunity for our
country. We can reform our eating habits. Food manufacturers can reduce the
amount of added sugars in our food, and overnight Americans will eat less sugar
even if they keep their diets exactly the same.
Or, we can just keep everything the same, and continue the cat
and mouse game between nutrition advocates and the government and food
manufacturers like we always do.
Let’s use this opportunity to make a change.
OtherWords
columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why
Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. OtherWords.org.