One element of nutrition advice that frustrates consumers is it keeps changing.  As a card-carrying member of the American Dietetic Association, a professional organization of nutritionists, I admit that our advice has changed over the years.  The primary reason?  Nutrition is a young science and we’re still learning a lot, causing advice to change. But that’s not my intention in today’s blog.  My point today is to provide some views on one piece of the advice you’ve heard for a long time – that all forms of fruits and vegetables (juice, sauce, whole) are the same, are equivalent.   In reality, they’re not.

You know the saying “don’t lose the forest for the trees, right?”  My viewpoints on the value of various forms of fruits and vegetables are a bit of the trees and the forest.

The trees are a message that you’ve all likely heard.  When you take whole apples, for example, and remove the skins and cook them to make sauce, obviously some of the nutrients (think fiber and vitamin C) are lost.  Then you go one step further and make juice and most of those nutrients are gone.  Not much is left except for sugar.  Make sense, right?  The foods are whittled down to the nutrients they provide.

But I think the more important message is in the forest.  Do an experiment.  One day for a snack have ½ cup of apple juice.  The next day for snack have a whole apple.  Do you have the same level of satiety, the same feeling of fullness after both?  Most likely not.  While there are products on the market today that make vegetables into powders and potions, suggesting that by adding a few tablespoons of this powder to a cup of water you’ll get the benefit of eating 5 vegetables, I disagree.  If you actually ate 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, you would have a full feeling that no powder can replace.  This is an important benefit of eating vegetables and fruits; they help you fell full.

Related to this is another viewpoint of the forest – what are you not eating because you are eating fruits and vegetables?  Carrot sticks and fresh green beans at 3 in the afternoon might prevent you from going for a cookie, a candy bar, or a bag of chips that is more calorie-dense and less nutrient-dense.

Whether they grow on trees or in the ground or on a vine. .. it’s important to look at the big picture of what vegetables and fruits contribute to overall healthy eating habits and overall health.

Visit www.nuval.com where whole fruits and vegetables score higher than juices or sauces.

As a part of my job, I have the opportunity to chat with consumers about what drives their food choices in the grocery store.  One of the most compelling of these conversations was with a group of moms in St. Cloud, MN at a Coborn’s grocery store.  Several of the moms commented that a key driver for their food purchasing decisions in the grocery store used to be whether the product is called “low fat.”  For them, this was an indicator of a “better for you” food.

But when NuVal™ Scores appeared on the shelves at Coborns, the moms quickly realized that “low fat” wasn’t necessarily synonymous with “better for you.”  Foods can be low in fat, but high in sodium or sugar.  Foods can be low in fat, but have very few positive nutrients (think fiber, calcium, vitamin D) that benefit health and keep us at our best.  Also, not all fat is bad; it’s really about the type of fat we eat.  NuVal™ Scores, which measure the overall nutrition quality of foods, showed these moms that “low fat” isn’t necessarily the goal when shopping.

For the moms in St. Cloud, they now have NuVal™ Scores to guide them to foods with higher nutrition quality.  If you live in a community that doesn’t have the NuVal™ System, move beyond “low fat” as your guide to “better for you” and look for products with less saturated and trans fat, sodium and sugar, and more fiber, healthy fats and vitamins and minerals.

Visit www.nuval.com to see why “low fat” foods don’t always score high.

Over the past two weeks, all the major nutrition news has been related to kids.  It’s definitely a sign that our country is taking children’s health issues seriously.  Here’s what’s happening.

Food Industry Proposes Their Own Guidelines for Advertising to Kids

As my last post mentions, the food industry was opposing nutrition criteria for foods that could be advertised to kids.  The criteria were proposed by a division of the Federal Trade Commission.  This week, the food industry has announced their own criteria, with less strict criteria than the government recommended.  For example, the government program uses 8 grams of sugar per serving as the cut off for foods that could be advertised to kids while the food industry’s criteria uses 10 grams.  When looked at historically, either would be a positive move.  A decade ago, cereals could be advertised if they had 15-16 grams of sugar and today the guideline is 12 grams.  If you look at the cereals that fall under the industry criteria, however, there may be some items that surprise you – Trix, Lucky Charms and Count Chocula.  So which is best for our kids, the government or industry-proposed criteria??

National Restaurant Association (NRA) Launches Kids LiveWell

Recognizing that dining out is no longer for special occasions and that the options offered in restaurants need to have better nutrition quality, this program was launched by the National Restaurant Association and Healthy Dining Finder.  Restaurants that participate in the voluntary program commit to offering healthful meal items for kids, with  focus on more fruit and vegetables, lean protein, whole grains and low-fat dairy, and limiting unhealthy fats, sugars and sodium.  Specific nutrition criteria have to be met for kids’ menu items in order for the restaurant to participate in the program.

The main question looming on all these activities is whether or not they go far enough.  They are positive changes, moving in the right direction, but at the end of the day each and every one of us (whether we are parents or work for a food company or are the owner of a restaurant) have to look inside and ensure that we’re driving towards solutions that can make a difference in the health issues facing today’s kids.  Is it enough or could we do more?

Visit www.nuval.com to see for yourself if these food scores are taking matters seriously enough.

The nutrition topic with the most action this week is guidelines for foods that can be marketed and advertised to kids. It’s an issue I’ve covered before, but it’s heating up again. The Interagency Working Group (IWG) out of the Federal Trade Commission has been working on rules that food manufacturers can voluntarily follow to decide which foods can be advertised to kids. It’s a hot topic this week because certain food manufacturers are pushing back on the guidelines.
The rationale for the guidelines is in the numbers:

• 70% of dollars spent on food marketed to kids under age 12 is spent on breakfast cereal, restaurant food, and snacks.
• 69% of the dollars spent on food marketed to kids age 12-17 is for carbonated beverages, restaurant food, and non-carbonated food.
• Today, nearly 1 out of every 3 kids in America is overweight or obese.

The guidelines suggest nutrition criteria that must be met for the food to be advertised to kids – limits on saturated and trans fat, sodium, and added sugar and the presence of positive nutrients or positive food groups like fruits, vegetables and whole grains. The suggested guidelines are voluntary, and are recommended for implementation by the year 2016.

Those opposing the rules suggest the nutrition criteria are too strict, that foods such as whole wheat bread won’t meet the guidelines because it has too much sodium and neither will bottled water as it doesn’t have positive nutrients in it. They also suggest that there’s no proof that changing the foods that can be advertised to kids will impact overall eating habits in the long run and that these rules inflict upon their constitutional right of free speech.

The bottom line to me on this issue and many nutrition topics today is that we are living in serious times here. We have a major economic crisis in our country, the rising cost of healthcare is part of it, obesity and heart disease are ramping up health care costs, more kids are obese than ever before, and what we eat contributes to our weight and our health. We have to all come together to take these issues seriously and find every solution possible that will potentially reverse the tide. Instead of opposing the suggested rules, suggest ways to make them workable, strive to meet them, strive to make a difference in kids’ lives, drive for solutions.

What I don’t understand is who wins by opposing these suggested voluntary rules?

Visit www.nuval.com to see food scores that support the recommendations of the IWG.