With the growing problem of infant obesity, low-fat and low-calorie foods are increasingly welcomed by parents, so many traditional foods have been improved. Does low fat and low heat mean no fat and no sugar? Does this food mean safer and healthier for babies?
What exactly does low-fat sugar-free mean?
Low-fat, fat-free and sugar-free are two unrelated types. Four concepts are defined in the national standard: fat-free means that the fat content in 100g solid food or 100ml liquid food does not exceed 0.5g, low fat means that the fat content in 100g solid food does not exceed 3g, or 100ml liquid food does not exceed 1.5g sugar-free.
It should be noted that the sugar here is not just sucrose, but the floorboard of all monosaccharides and disaccharides. In addition to sucrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, maltose and so on are common. Honey and fructose syrup are a mixture of fructose and glucose, which are also mentioned in national standards. Moreover, low-sugar sugar-free is not aimed at added sugar, and naturally occurring sugar in food also needs to be counted. For example, in orange juice or apple juice, the natural sugar content can reach about 10%. Even if it is 100%, the sugar content will greatly exceed the regulation of low sugar and no sugar.
Many parents choose low-fat and sugar-free foods to prevent their children from getting fat. However, weight gain is not due to eating high-sugar or high-fat foods, but because the calories consumed exceed the calories consumed. Fat-free and sugar-free, it is not necessarily guaranteed to be low in calories. The key is, after defatting and sugar-free, what ingredients are used to replace sugar and fat in food.
Sugar mainly produces sweetness in food, and some foods need it to improve the texture of food. If you must use sugar, or reduce the use of sugar, the first thing to consider is how to solve the sweetness. Do you want sugar or sweetener? Generally speaking, sweetness has a great influence on children. Accept a kind of food. If it becomes not sweet, children may not like it. If you use sweeteners, you can really avoid the use of sugar. For example, many milk drinks use sweeteners to produce some sweetness. If the sugar content is reduced to 5%, it can be declared as low sugar. This helps to reduce the adverse effects of sugar on health. For example, the corrosion of sugar on teeth and the metabolic problems caused by fructose can also be avoided.
However, this does not mean that such foods and drinks are so healthy. The influence of sweetness on children goes far beyond gaining weight. More importantly, the more sweets they eat, the less they like sweets without sugar, which affects their acceptance of healthy food and promotes the formation of bad habits such as picky eaters and partial eclipse. In addition, it is simple for drinks to replace sugar with sweeteners, but for solid foods, it is necessary to consider what to use to fill solids after sugar is not used. Besides carbohydrates, there are protein and fat in food. If you are fat, you will only get out of the tiger's mouth and enter the wolf's den. It is good to substitute protein for nutrition, but the price and taste will be completely different. Among carbohydrates, sugar molecules are small and simple in structure. If starch or starch dextrin is used instead of sugar, it only has some advantages in increasing sugar index, which is not very important for children and does not help to lose weight. Using cellulose carbohydrates can help you lose weight and even gain other health values. However, the processability of dietary fiber in food is too different from that of sugar, so it is not easy to be replaced.
It is famous for its high calorie of fat. It is recommended to limit the total amount of fat or saturated fat. Generally speaking, fat mainly exists in solid or semi-solid foods, such as cakes, yogurt and desserts. Whether low-fat and fat-free are healthier depends on what is used to replace them. At present, there is a product on the market that is replaced by carbohydrates such as starch dextrin. Compared with fat, the impact on health is pot calling the kettle black. There is also a kind of food gum instead, most of which is dietary fiber, and some of which is protein. Generally speaking, such substitution will have a certain impact on the taste, but the impact on health is still relatively positive.
Isn't low-fat and low-sugar fat?
As people pay more and more attention to food health, reducing unhealthy food ingredients is becoming a selling point. No fat, no sugar, low salt, trans fat, no preservatives, no cholesterol, etc. These have great market appeal. In the national standards, these terms are also affirmed and their use is standardized.
Generally speaking, these foods that meet the standards will have certain positive significance in a certain aspect. However, it is normal to press the gourd to float the ladle in the gourmet menu. Without this, we have to use that instead. What we need to pay attention to is: Is the substitute without it healthier than the ingredient without it?
There are indeed more and healthier options. For example, the examples mentioned above include using edible gum instead of fat to achieve fat-free, potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride to achieve low salt, and vegetable oil instead of animal oil to achieve cholesterol-free.
Some are mainly marketing gimmicks. For example, instead of adding sugar, use raw materials with high natural sugar. Or do not add preservatives, but use high salt to achieve antiseptic effect.
For ordinary consumers, this is not just a sentence that can explain whether these statements are true or not and whether they are beneficial to health. Taking inaction as a reference, it is more important to look at the nutrition label and understand what is the key after XX. At present, nutrition labels in China and the United States list total calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and sodium. In addition, ingredients are required to be listed according to their contents. This nutrition label is simple, but it can also provide considerable information. For parents who are worried about their children's weight gain, the primary concern should be calories. The same amount of food, low calorie will be better. For the health impact, the lower the fat, the lower the sodium content, the better. Sugar, starch and dietary fiber have completely different effects on health, but they are all classified as carbohydrates in the labeling of nutritional components. Some products have a more detailed list, which will separate the contents of sugar and dietary fiber. The higher the dietary fiber, the lower the sugar content, and the more recommended. If there is no such detailed list, you can guess by looking at the component list. The higher the list, the higher the content. For example, in a food ingredient list, if sugar comes before starch, the proportion of sugar in carbohydrates will be higher.
What's the point?
Differentiation is an effective means in marketing, and children's delicious food is a market with great potential. Many foods will fetch a good price as long as they are labeled as children. However, the vast majority of children in fact, American food only attracts children in taste and taste, and even many foods only attract children in packaging. For the sake of flavor and taste, the ingredients are even unhealthy, such as sweeter, saltier, crisper and so on.