Introduction: Does low fat and low heat mean no fat and sugar? Does this food mean safer and healthier for babies?

With the growing problem of infant obesity, low-fat and low-calorie foods are more and more popular with 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 and sugar-free mean?

Low-fat, fat-free and low-sugar and sugar-free are two unrelated types. The four concepts are clearly defined in national standards: fat-free means that the fat content in 1g solid or 1ml liquid food does not exceed .5g, low-fat means that the fat content in 1g solid food does not exceed 3g, or the fat content in 1ml liquid food does not exceed 1.5g sugar-free means that the sugar content in 1g solid or 1ml liquid food does not exceed .5g, and the low sugar content does not exceed 5g.

It should be noted that the sugar here is not just sucrose, but the general name 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, and they are also mentioned in the national standard. 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, natural sugar content can reach about 1%. Even if it is 1%, the sugar content will greatly exceed the regulations of low sugar and sugar-free. : 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 have to use sugar, or reduce the use of sugar, the first thing to consider is how to solve the sweetness. Do you want no sugar or sweetener? Generally speaking, sweetness has a great influence on children. Accept a 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 food 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 unsweetened sweets, which affects their acceptance of healthy food and promotes the formation of bad habits such as picky eaters and partial eclipse. In addition, using sweeteners instead of sugar is simple for drinks, 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 switch to fat, you will only go out of the tiger's mouth and enter the wolf's study. 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, but it 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 processing performance of dietary fiber in food is too different from that of sugar to be easily 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.

won't you gain weight if you are low in fat and sugar?

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 in gourmet recipes to press the gourd to float the ladle. 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 choices. 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 of them are mainly marketing gimmicks. For example, instead of adding sugar, raw materials with high natural sugar content are used. Or do not add preservatives, but use high salt to achieve antiseptic effect.

For ordinary consumers, it 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 no XX. At present, the nutrition labels in China and the United States list the total calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and sodium, in addition, the ingredients are required to be listed according to their contents. This nutrient label is simple, but it can also provide quite a lot of 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 it by looking at the component list. The higher the list, the higher the content. For example, in the ingredient list of a food, if sugar comes before starch, the proportion of sugar in carbohydrates will be higher.

What is the key

Differentiation is an effective means in marketing, and children's American food is a market with great potential. Many foods will sell at 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, ingredients are even unhealthy, such as sweeter, saltier, crisper and so on.