Fat free but full of calories products at the supermarket

Navigating the Supermarket generally, the more you know about a food product, the better off you’ll be. I know it sounds like you are going to be reading labels for hours every time you set foot in the supermarket. But keep in mind that most of us buy the same products over and over. What we really need is to invest some time initially. Once we have checked labels and surveyed some of our favorite products, we won’t have to check those labels out again.

Start by reading the portion size on the label, because what the manufacturer considers a serving and what you think is a serving can be two very different things. I am continually amazed at some of the portion sizes I’ve found listed. A popular muffin company listed half a muffin as a serving (have you ever seen someone eat half of a muffin?). If I hadn’t read the portion size on the label and just took a quick glance at the fat, fiber, sugar and calories, I would have thought the muffin had 12 grams of fat instead of 24 and 310 calories instead of 620! Some products within the same category even have different serving sizes. Some breads list one slice as a serving. Others use two slices. In the cereal aisle you’ll find everything from half a cup to one and a half cups as a serving.

Once you’ve made it past the portion size, you can follow the label down to find calories, fat grams, saturated fat grams, fiber grams, and sugar grams.

Fat-free but full of calories

Just because a product is fat-free doesn’t mean it is caloriefree or that you can eat the whole box in one sitting. In fact, many of these fat-free products have just as many calories as the full-fat versions. How can that be? In a word sugar.

Sugar, whether it comes from honey, corn syrup, brown sugar, or high fructose corn syrup, can add moisture and help tenderize bakery products. When added to foods it adds flavor and structure. I’m not surprised that manufacturers have turned to sugar for assistance in developing reduced-fat and fat-free products. Keep in mind that although a majority of the fat-free and lower-fat products on the supermarket shelves have skimmed off the fat, the calories are mostly the same as the full-fat versions (saving only 10 or 20 calories per serving).

Some products have gone too far

I’ve got to confess a few of my product biases. I am philosophically opposed to fat-free margarine, mayonnaise, and cheese. If you take the fat completely out of a food that was mostly fat to begin with such as mayonnaise, or butter then what have you really got? Something other than mayonnaise and butter.

More than half of the new fat-free or “light” products I try end up in the garbage can. But about 20 percent of the products end up being keepers. These are the products that successfully found an optimal reduced level of fat. These are the foods that withstood a modest reduction in fat without a huge loss in taste satisfaction.

Can’t get any satisfaction?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but some of these fat-free products (many of which are really high in sugar) aren’t very satisfying or filling in the long run. So if you are eating these foods, there is the tendency to eat more. This will only make you hungry again. When the low-fat, no-fat diets became the craze, products with more sugar and less fat proliferated. Now we have to rethink these choices. Ask yourself a few questions:

• Does this product have a lot of sugar? (Most of them do.)
• Does this fat-free product have almost as many calories as the regular version? (Most of them do.)
• Do I truly enjoy this product? Do I tend to eat unreasonable amounts of it to satisfy myself? (Most of you do.)

With the 10 food steps to freedom in mind, I’ve taken the liberty of reading some labels and putting together tables that I hope will save you from hours of label reading.