The short answer is: not necessarily! The low-fat craze started in the 80’s and 90’s when the diet industry declared fat as the enemy. Supermarket shelves filled up with low-fat products that claimed they were healthy for us and consumers filled their fridges and cupboards with them.
In most cases, low-fat ‘healthy’ products, advertised as such, simply are not very good for us as most of them are full of chemicals. When you take something away, like fat from yogurt, you have to replace it with something else to give it flavor and substance. This is usually sugar, salt and a plethora of other synthetic additives not to mention preservatives. Look at it this way, it’s extremely difficult to take your average cracker and simply remove all the fat without destroying its consistency. And the same goes for anything called ‘zero calorie’. If one cracker is 30 calories, and another is only 5, how does that transformation actually take place?
The answer is generally chemical. Undesirable parts are synthetically removed, and replaced with substitutes that have different nutritional properties. But these ingredients don’t always behave in the same way, so further additions need to be made in order to make a non-fat cracker seem like its fatter cousin.
In many cases, when fat is taken out, sugar is added to make up for taste.
For example, 3.5 ounces of regular Chocolate Swiss ice cream has 12.9 grams total fat and 17.5 g sugar. The reduced fat Chocolate Swiss ice cream has 10.1 g total fat and 25.5 g sugar. So 2.8 fewer grams of total fat, however it has 8 more grams of sugar. In some instances, you’ll find the sugar replaced with Aspartame, or another equally bad artificial sweetener with terrible effects on the body.
So next time you go to the grocery store and you reach for that low fat yogurt, take a look at the label. If you see ingredients you can’t actually pronounce, stay away! Instead opt for the real deal understanding that quality is more important than quantity. Always choose foods that are as natural and whole as possible.
In most cases, low-fat ‘healthy’ products, advertised as such, simply are not very good for us as most of them are full of chemicals. When you take something away, like fat from yogurt, you have to replace it with something else to give it flavor and substance. This is usually sugar, salt and a plethora of other synthetic additives not to mention preservatives. Look at it this way, it’s extremely difficult to take your average cracker and simply remove all the fat without destroying its consistency. And the same goes for anything called ‘zero calorie’. If one cracker is 30 calories, and another is only 5, how does that transformation actually take place?
The answer is generally chemical. Undesirable parts are synthetically removed, and replaced with substitutes that have different nutritional properties. But these ingredients don’t always behave in the same way, so further additions need to be made in order to make a non-fat cracker seem like its fatter cousin.
In many cases, when fat is taken out, sugar is added to make up for taste.
For example, 3.5 ounces of regular Chocolate Swiss ice cream has 12.9 grams total fat and 17.5 g sugar. The reduced fat Chocolate Swiss ice cream has 10.1 g total fat and 25.5 g sugar. So 2.8 fewer grams of total fat, however it has 8 more grams of sugar. In some instances, you’ll find the sugar replaced with Aspartame, or another equally bad artificial sweetener with terrible effects on the body.
So next time you go to the grocery store and you reach for that low fat yogurt, take a look at the label. If you see ingredients you can’t actually pronounce, stay away! Instead opt for the real deal understanding that quality is more important than quantity. Always choose foods that are as natural and whole as possible.
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