What healthy foods aren't healthy?

Answer 1

Your question is a bit of a fallacy, since any truly healthy food is healthy.

However, there are clearly many unhealthy foods which are advertised as having health benefits, but this does not necessarily make them healthy. For example, pretty much any type of gummy sweet could carry the health claim "low in fat" on the packaging, since it is true - sugar contains no fat. Many could also carry the claim "low in salt", but again, this does not mean they are a healthy foodstuff.

What you'll find these days, however, is that most gummy sweets make the claim "no artificial additives, colourings, flavourings or preservatives" - or something along those lines. Once again, it is a true claim, but it promotes the naturalistic fallacy - that natural products are safer/more desirable/healthier/lower calorie than "unnatural" things. You may notice that a similar rationale is implied by labeling something "organic"; even though, rationally, most people realise that an organic biscuit is likely to carry the same amount of calories, fat and sugar as a regular non-organic biscuit, there is still a feeling that, in some way, the organic biscuit is healthier/more special.

You may also notice gummy sweets claiming that they're "25% fruit juice!" or sometime similar. I assume this is meant to make them sound better than "75% sugar!". The fruit juice claim is designed to give the impression that it's a healthier product than it actually is.

Another weird claim which finds its way onto packaging is the "contains (this many portions) of your 5 fruit and veg a day". One portion of fruit/veg is considered to be 80g of uncooked fruit/veg. But this claim can still make it's way onto packaging if the fruit/veg has come from a concentrate (80g of fruit which has then been concentrated becomes a tiny amount), or if it was 80g of fruit which has been dried etc... This means that, in some instances, you will find products making a claim about being part of your 5-a-day, without actually being able to see fruit or vegetables in the product. For example, a well-known brand of tinned spaghetti claims to be one of your 5-a-day, on the basis of the amount of tomato concentrate in the sauce. To me, being able to put these kind of claims on heavily processed goods completely misconstrues the idea of 5-a-day, giving the impression that the goods are over-all healthy, when in many instances they are not.

However, you will also see products which do contain fruit/vegetables which claim to be part of your 5-a-day - e.g fresh fruit salad pots. This seems a perfectly legitimate use of the claim.

Another slightly odd health claim is one which makes it's way onto a particular brand of microwaveable oatmeal breakfast cereal, sold in a variety of flavours in the UK. It claims to lower your cholesterol, and it is true that eating oats can lower your cholesterol. However, you would have to eat at least three bowls of the cereal per day to experience any cholesterol lowering effect, which would not be a great idea in itself due to the high sugar of the cereal.

Recently, you may have noticed a decline in the amount of yoghurt adverts and probiotic drink adverts which make claims that they "keep your tummy happy/less bloated" etc... These claims had to be withdrawn due to lack of evidence. Although there is evidence to suggest that in a very specific group of people, probiotic capsules prepared under medical conditions using specific bacteria in an enteric coated capsule may benefit their health, this claim cannot be applied to yoghurt/probiotic drinks, because of the variability in bacteria, bacteria levels, and the tendency for stomach acid to kill off the bacteria before it reaches your gut. (The enteric coating of the capsules prevents the bacteria being killed by your stomach acid).

Finally, you may have noticed a trend for products to become fortified with various vitamins and minerals, particularly if a certain one is becoming very popular:

For example, a few years ago, omega 3's were the new fad, and many manufacturers began to fortify their foods with omega 3's. These days the data on omega 3's and health is more varied than it was, and it's not easy to draw a straightforward conclusion from it. Not that that matters hugely, since the level to which manufacturers fortified their foods was pretty tiny anyway; they only had to add a tiny amount in order to put that claim on their packaging, and were inclined to only add a tiny amount due to the cost, and the fact that omega 3's tend to turn rancid more easily than other oils. However being able to stick the claim "with added omega 3" on their packaging still managed to give the impression that their product had health benefits when in many cases that was not true.

These days, vitamin D seems to be becoming the new omega 3. It has recently been added to cornflakes, and in the UK there is now a couple of brands of yoghurts which advertise with the suggestion that if you don't eat their particular yoghurt which is fortified with vitamin D, you will break a hip. Although there probably are not any side-effects from consuming foods fortified with omega 3/vitamin D (because generally the fortification is tiny), it is the health claim that goes with it which sometimes gives the misleading impression that a product is more healthy than it actually is; it's still best to read the ingredients and nutritional analysis.