Hi Guys. Over the last few months I’ve been asked for my thoughts, ideas and suggestions on low-fat foods many times – even more than I normally am. On radio, via email, in workshops, in coaching sessions and incidentally as I’m going about my day, the questions have rolled in. In response to all those (mostly similar) questions, today I thought I would roll out a new-and-improved, updated and tweaked version of a post I wrote a few years back. Here it is…
97% Bullshit
I’m always being asked for my opinion on a range of products: books, supplements, programs, exercise equipment and lately (for some strange reason) frozen low-fat meals. Now, you and I both know that many products aren’t exactly what their companies make them out to be, especially when it comes to food products and supplements. Of course not. It’s their job to sell as much stuff and make as much money as possible and it’s your job to figure out exactly what you’re buying and, in this case, putting into your body. Of course, these companies don’t care about your physical health (that’s your job too), they care about their financial health and keeping their shareholders happy. That’s okay. That’s called business.
Which is why we need a bullshit filter – to be able to sift through the marketing crap, the misleading figures, the pretty pictures, the celebrity endorsements and uncover the absolute truth about individual products.
Of course, it would be great if we lived in a world where every manufacturer and supplier was completely transparent about their products but we don’t. We live in a highly competitive, win-at-all-costs, sometimes amoral world where some companies will do pretty much anything to ‘win’. So the net result of all that is that you and I need to be more aware, more educated and less naive, especially when it comes to managing our greatest resource - our body.
I could write an entire book on this subject (companies misrepresenting products, misleading consumers, using selective science and distorting the truth to sell products) but, for today, I’ll just focus on some simple, easy-to-understand examples of how quickly we can be misled when it comes to certain products, in this particular instance low-fat meals that aren’t low-fat at all and good old-fashioned milk.
Ignore the Front and Read the Back
If you really want to know what’s in the box (packet, can, bag, carton, bottle) understand that what’s written on the front of the product is called advertising – not information. The important, relevant and enlightening information is usually located somewhere on the back of the product in teeny-weeny writing. No shock there. And why is it hidden around the back in too-small-to-read print? Because (1) it’s the law to display such information and (2) they want you to overlook it.
Frozen Dinner
Recently someone asked me what I thought of a particular ‘low-fat’ frozen dinner. I asked them to bring me the box so that I could take a peek at the nutritional information and give them some informed advice specific to that product. You can see (part of) the front of the box in the picture (sorry about Johnnie’s photographic skills – or lack thereof). I have intentionally not included the name of the manufacturer because most of these types of products (irrespective of the company) are very similar in terms of nutritional value, so I felt to publicly identify one of many companies would be unfair.
Notice that the most prominent writing on this label – “97% fat free” – is in large, impossible-to-miss letters. So clearly, this must be a healthy, low-fat product. It says so right there on the box! 
It also has the tick of approval from the ‘National Heart Foundation’ (bottom left), so it must be extra good. But, as I said before, things are not always as they seem – especially when it comes to low-fat food options.
Now, let’s take a look at the reverse side of the packet and we will discover how misleading some packaging and marketing can be. You may need to really pay attention and put on your thinking cap for the next bit. It’s hard to make out, but the second green line in the nutrition information box says:
Fat, total (2.7% of meal) and we’ve already discovered from the front of the box that this meal is 97% fat-free, so that all stacks up. So far.
However…
What if the formula that these companies use to calculate fat doesn’t really tell us the true story? What if it’s misleading? What if it’s shonky science?
When (most) companies calculate the fat percentage of their products they do so based on the weight of those products. For example, if a product weighs 100 grams and it contains 10 grams of fat, then that product is claimed to be 10% fat, or (as is often the case) 90% fat-free. If we look at this particular product, we see that it weighs 340 grams and that it contains 9.2 grams of fat – therefore we have a meal which is only 2.7% fat. Or do we?
Now, if the weight of food was the issue (in terms of its impact on our body) then they would be right but when it comes to you and me gaining or losing body-fat (which is what most people are concerned with – when choosing such a product), it ain’t about the weight of food we put in our body – it’s about its energy density. That is, how many calories that particular product contains. If gaining or losing weight was only about the weight of food we consume, I’d have to give up watermelon ’cause it’s kinda heavy!!
What we must know to be able to accurately estimate the fat percentage of any food (and, therefore, its potential impact on us) is this:
1. Total calories contained in that meal or product.
2. How many of those (total) calories come from fat.
Simply calculate the fat calories as a percentage of the total calories (in the product) and then you’ll get an accurate picture of whether a product truly is low in fat. For example:
The above ‘low-fat’ meal contains a total of 378 calories and we know that it contains 9.2 grams of fat (the nutrition label gives us this info). We also know that one gram of fat contains 9 calories (well, you do now). So, by simply multiplying 9.2 (the total grams of fat in this meal) by 9 (the calories per gram of fat) we can calculate that 82.8 of the total calories in this meal come from fat!!
In other words, just under 25% of the calories in this ‘low-fat’ meal are derived from fat!! Hmmm, no wonder they use the ‘weight’ thing as opposed to the energy density thing. It would be much harder to sell a low-fat meal that was 25% fat wouldn’t it?
Milk
Regular cow’s milk is generally marketed as being about 4% fat. Here’s the (misleading) theory behind that:
100 ml of full-cream milk (which weighs 100 grams) contains four grams of fat – therefore, it’s considered to be 4% fat (or 96% fat-free). However, when we look at the total calories in that milk (66) and we identify how many of those calories come from fat (4 grams x 9 calories per gram = 36 calories ), we discover that (in terms of energy), regular cow’s milk is somewhere in the vicinity of 55% fat… which is slightly more than 4%!!!
Remember, Grasshoppers, not everything is as it seems. Painting stripes on a horse doesn’t make it a zebra. Learn your own truth.
Let me know your thoughts (ideas, experiences) on this topic. 
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Surely the bigger problem with something being low in fat is that it tends to be very high in carb (aka sugar), which our bodies either have to use as energy pdq or it gets converted to triglycerides and stored on our bellies.
There are only three macronutrients to choose from; if you cut one down you need to increase the others and I suspect your boxed meal is way more carbonara than chicken.
Our ancestors lived quite nicely on plenty of (natural) fats, – they taste good and give you nice, steady energy. It’s only with our modern sedentary lifestyles combined with a diet high in frankenfats, refined sugar and flour, and other packaged processed goodies with ingredients lists full of chemical names and numbers that has made us the full figured metabolically compromised population that we are. A generalisation but you get my drift.
PS anything with a heart tick on the box indicates to me the product’s full of sugar so I tend to give it a wide berth. Now pass me my berries and (unsweetened) whipped cream for dessert – cheers!
To lose weight… eat from smaller plates.
Holy crap Batman! I don’t know where my brain has been but thanks for the lesson in accurate reporting. I’ll be taking a calculator to the supermarket in future!
My diet person I go to said the same thing today! Amazing. But cutting it out i’ve lost 15 cms off waist so yes it is a deception.
Now see, I think that fats get a bad reputation.
Yes, saturated fat is artery clogging sludge…
… but our bodies don’t digest fats into sugars unless we’re starving.
Fats also don’t pass through cell walls. (Unless we’ve got a much worse medical condition than starvation. A person could potentially survive a week while starving. I couldn’t imagine a person surviving a minute, much less an hour, if their cells become fat soluble.)
Cholesterol comes in 2 basic flavors. (Well, 4, but two are very rare and are by-products of industrialized food preparation. In other words, avoid Oreos and the like.) The two flavors of cholesterol are HDL and LDL… “bad” and “good” lipids, respectively, or saturated fats and unsaturated fats.
Cholesterol is important. Every single cell in our bodies depends on cholesterol. Every cell wall, and most of the major structures in the cells are made from cholesterol. We even use cholesterol for our own mammalian brand of photosynthesis: we make vitamin D from cholesterol when we are exposed to sunlight. (sunlight filtered through windows doesn’t count; the windows block the UV light needed for human photosynthesis.)
The inflammation response generated by our immune systems triggers our livers to produce and release vast quantities of cholesterol into our blood stream… kind of like a civil contractor sending truckloads of wet cement to a cracking dam. The cholesterol is meant to provide the raw materials to help repair damaged cells and promote the growth of new cells.
Heart disease and stroke patients typically have very high levels of cholesterol because… well… they just had a heart attack or stroke. Their entire bodies are typically inflamed. Researchers who can only look at the blood notice that the biggest difference between a healthy individual and a cardiac/stroke patient is their cholesterol levels, and assume that the cholesterol is a cause of the disease, not the body’s attempt at a cure.
I didn’t want to ramble about cholesterol, though… although it is food for thought.
Instead, I wanted to talk about what actually makes people fat: sugars.
Now, since lipids can’t pass through cell walls… and lipids aren’t turned into sugars unless we’re starving… and we can only metabolize (burn) sugars… and we can’t metabolize something that isn’t contained within a cell… that means that all of the calories from fat are absolutely meaningless. (Unless you’re an infant whose sole source of nutrition is milk… but then, why are you reading this, why aren’t you practicing your eye-hand coordination and learning how to roll over and crawl?)
So… calories from fat are meaningless. Calories from proteins are also meaningless, though some proteins do break down during the digestion process.
The good news, though, is that sugar doesn’t pass through cell walls all by itself. We can’t lose sugar from our cells because it needs a second chemical to push the sugar through… and that chemical is only found in our blood stream and not found within the cells, so that pathway is one-way-only. This magical chemical? Insulin.
Now… all sugars get turned into glucose during digestion. Sugars range all the way from maltose (beer, wine, etc), high fructose corn syrup, starch (bread, corn, potato), lactose (milk), fructose (fruit), sucrose (vegetables, “table sugar”), glucose (animals), and on through a few rare and specialized types of carbohydrates.
Fiber is a carbohydrate… according to chemists, it’s a sugar… but our human bodies don’t break it down into glucose. It has something to do with us having only 1 stomach, instead of the 3 or 4 stomachs that creatures like elk and cows have.
All of these different types of foods… sugars, starches, acids, fats, proteins… We want a simple number to tell us how these foods benefit us. Well, the number that seems to be universally recognized is the calorie… That is… how much heat do they produce when they’re burned? A single calorie is enough energy to heat 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius.
This is great… because most things we eat can be burned.
We can burn fat. We’ve done it for centuries in lamps, before electric light.
We can burn sugar. It makes a nice “whoosh”. (have a fire extinguisher or two handy, or better yet, don’t try this at home without proper supervision.)
We can burn starches… they burn faster than sugar.
We can’t burn acids, though… but protein burns, and fiber burns too. (Paper burns… it’s made out of fiber. Wood burns… and it’s the very definition of fiber.)
So… most of the things we put in our mouths burn.
But we only turn sugars and starches into glucose.
…And only glucose can be turned into energy.
…Yet the back of the boxes all show total calories.
Here’s another trick. Only fat cells can make fat. They turn glucose into fat, and hold on to that fat until we’re starving. Only fat cells can make us fat. If our muscle fibers grew, we wouldn’t get fat, we’d get muscular. If our bones cells grew, we wouldn’t get fat (or even big boned) we’d lose the ability to move because our joints would fuse together. If our nerves grew, we wouldn’t get fat, we’d just… well, I don’t know what would happen. It probably wouldn’t be good, though.
Only insulin can push sugar into our cells.
Most cells can only take in a limited amount of sugar.
Sugar is the only thing that turns into energy.
Sugar is also the only thing that turns into fat.
(to recap: Starch is a sugar. Fiber is a carb that isn’t a sugar for the purpose of our discussion. Alcohol is a sugar that deprives the brain of oxygen.)
So… if none of our “useful” cells can take in any more sugar, yet the insulin is flowing through our blood stream trying to push the sugar through cell walls, the sugar ends up in our fat cells, and gets turned into fat. (Yes, fat cells are useful. VERY VERY useful. VERY VERY essential to the proper function of your body. Don’t take them out… but don’t over-stuff them either.)
The good news, if you don’t want to get fat, is that it’s easy to keep from over-stuffing your fat cells. Well, technically it’s easy. It’s about as psychologically easy as quitting smoking. Quitting smoking was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life… yet also the easiest. I literally had to do nothing.
Anyways, how to not get fat:
Have room in your other cells for more energy… This can be accomplished through exercising.
Don’t flood your blood stream with sugar… This can be accomplished through portion control.
Don’t flood your blood stream with insulin… Insulin is released while you’re eating… and your body tries to predict how much sugar you’ll be taking in. However, it is extremely easy to trick your body into releasing way too much insulin.
Here’s the story: You eat 10 grams of sugar. Let’s say raw table sugar, so that it’s easy to visualize… just one mouthful. Your body sees all of this sugar come in all at once, and thinks that you’ll be eating much, much more over then next 15 minutes… so releases enough insulin to push 100 grams of sugar into your cells.
The insulin gets to work… pushes the 10 grams that you just ate, as well as 90 grams of “background” glucose into your cells. (Your body keeps some glucose stored in your blood stream for emergencies, like if you need to run form a lion, and because you constantly use sugar… the brain is a very hungry mass of cells.) Suddenly, your body realizes that its very low on sugar… so it sends out hunger signals.
So… to fight the hunger, you eat 100 grams of sugar… perhaps a large candy bar or something. One of those that advertises how much it “satisfies.” You eat it in 3 minutes and go on your way…
Again, your body gets all 100 grams of sugar all at once. Technically this is enough to bring your blood stream up to normal levels… but your body is predicting still… Since all of the sugar arrives all at once, your body expects a total of 200 grams of sugar, and pumps out enough insulin to handle it all.
Except… your cells are all full of sugar, from that 100g jolt they got when you ate the 10g of table sugar. There is nowhere for the insulin to put the 200g of sugar, except into your fat cells.
So, into your fat cells it goes… And now, back to the math… 10g -100g = -90g. -90g + 100g = 10g… 10g – 200g = -190g. The story so far… We ate 10g of sugar, our bodies produced enough insulin to handle 100g, leaving our bloodstream short by 90g. We ate 100g more of sugar, but our bodies produced enough insulin to handle 200g, leaving us short by 190g, and about 100g of sugar worth fatter.
And we’re hungry again. VERY hungry now. The candy bar satisfied for about an hour… probably less than an hour, actually… but even though it gave our bodies more sugar, it just made us feel good for 15 minutes until we crashed, ran out of energy, and left us hungrier than ever before.
So… what can we do to manage our insulin?
Well… our bodies try to predict what we’ll do, and release insulin based on those predictions. Our bodies learned how to predict over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, and we have only had high fructose corn syrup for the past 100 years.
We just need to be predictable in how we eat.
The body expects that when we start eating, we’ll continue eating for at least 15 minutes. So, eat slowly, and space the meal out over at least 15 minutes.
Our body also expects small snacks, like fruits and berries, throughout the day… so graze.
Our bodies have no idea how to handle bread, corn, potatoes, or other starchy foods… because unprocessed starch can’t be digested, but with just a little bit of heat before eating, the starch VERY VERY quickly becomes a sugar in our bodies… In fact, the only chemical that becomes glucose in our blood streams faster than starch is maltose (alcohol). (Glucose has to be broken down into other sugars before it can pass through our intestinal walls and be absorbed into our bodies… so glucose takes longer to become glucose than even fructose (fruit sugar) does. It makes sense if you think about it: If glucose can go in easily, then it can go out easily, and we don’t want our primary energy source to go down the toilet, right?)
The way to trick our bodies into handling starches is to find other chemicals to slow digestion down.
Fiber works great. You could literally eat cardboard before a meal (make sure it doesn’t have any nasty chemicals first) and it would help keep your insulin levels in check. Of course, it tastes nasty… no have some green leafy vegetables instead, before your main meal. Not only does a good salad help with digestion (and the ugly end of digestion), but it gives plenty of other vitamins and nutrients that the body loves.
Fats slow down digestion in the stomach. Fat is at the opposite end of the PH scale as stomach acids… so it helps to dilute the acid. Just remember that plant oils are far healthier than animal fats, and olive oil is one of the healthiest.
Acids slow down digestion in the intestines. One of the most immediate jobs of the intestines is to stop the acids from the stomach, after all.
So… before a meal, how about a salad with a nice olive oil based, low sugar vinaigrette? The fiber in the salad slows digestion throughout. The olive oil slows digestion in the stomach (and helps regulate cholesterol levels in the blood stream, primarily by keeping it from clotting). The vinegar slows digestion in the intestines, and helps to add a kick of flavor to the food, as well as prepares the taste buds for the glass of red wine that will be inevitably drunk with the meal.
Oh, and have your big meal in the middle of the day… and go for a light 4 mile jog before hand (be sure to stretch out first).
And… most importantly… TALK TO A PROFESSIONAL DIETITIAN AND EXERCISE SCIENTIST FIRST! Everybody’s body is different and unique… and while a lot of things are valid for the vast majority of the population, there are exceptions. Make sure you’re not one of these exceptions before going out and becoming exceptional.
Craig… I know… I ramble too much. Sorry.
I agree with Tracey. The whole emphasis on low fat (and polyunsaturated vs. saturated ) for the past generation has been a nutritional disaster, and may, in fact, be behind the obesity epidemic. And recent research makes the “lipid hypothesis” (that cholesterol causes heart disease) look pretty shaky. (Read Gary Taubes’ “Good Calories, Bad Calories”.) Every cell wall in our bodies is made of saturated fat, and for hundreds of thousands of years, hunter-gatherers lived on meat — they had no agricultural products (incl. grains) and no sugar (only occasionally seasonal fruit). Our standard diet is a far cry from what our genetic heritage actually require, and obesity is one more “disease of civilization,” not a moral failing, but it is avoidable by re-examining of what constitutes a healthy diet.
I agree with Tracey about the added sugar. Sugar can come in many forms with the worst being those that everyone says are good for diabetics. My body does not know the difference between real sugar, Sweet ‘N Low and Equal. To me, the label saying it is sugar-free doesn’t help if it has artificial sweeteners. Today the cheapest form of sugar comes in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Guess what? Many of us are allergic to corn and may not even know it. Today it is in everything. As a diabetic, I really have to read labels. I do so because I want to be able to continue to control my diabetes by diet alone. My A1C tests levels stay between 5.5 and 6.5 usually which is great according to my doctor.
I also cannot eat more than 15 grams of carbs per meal or my blood sugar level goes too high. I pay close attention to carbs. I cannot eat the American Diabetes Association Diet because it is full of carbs. I did it the first two weeks after I was diagnosed as a diabetic with my doctors orders to do so. I was on a sugar buzz from all of the fruit that they told me to eat the whole time. To stay under 15 grams of carbs, I had to do away with the fruit.
Reading labels and knowing the carb content to me is as important as knowing how much fat is in a product. This may not work for everybody but it works for me. I have been reading labels for about 7 years now and still controlling my diabetes without medication except at Thanksgiving and Christmas when I choose to eat what I want during the holidays.
This is confusing! (The nutritional information, not your explanation). To me, 378 calories wouldn’t have seemed too bad as a main meal, but thinking that a quarter of what you’re eating is fat is somehow not so appetising.
As for the fat content of fruit and veg (which don’t come with information labels), I usually just assume they are “safe”…
How to lose weight without really trying…
1) eat from smaller plates (as previously mentioned)
2) drink two glasses of water before each meal
3) eat breakfast (it gets your metabolism started)
4) replace carbs from things like potatoes and rice with more vegetables
5) avoid processed food as much as possible (its full of sugar, salt and MSG
6) find an activity that you can have fun at
there you go that didn’t hurt a bit did it?
Hey Guys – yep, you’re right – lower fat packaged meals usually means higher sugar and/or salt to off-set the drop in fat (and taste) – and no, not all fats are bad. Sadly, the masses are not as elightened or responsible as you guys and tend to load up on the wrong types (and amounts) of fats on a regular basis – that’s a fact, not a theory.
I’ve written (specifically) about that topic before but that’s not what today’s article is about. This chat is about deception, understanding and awareness when it comes to the issue of how company represent the contents of their products and what we (consumers) believe we’re getting.
Nonetheless, I’m happy to hear all of your thoughts and ideas whether they’re specific to this article or reach a little further – it’s all relevant stuff.
xx
The whole fat and sugar thing is confusing for me, that is why I avoid the pre packaged meals all together. The only thing I get from the frozen food section is frozen vegies!
Have you noticed the ingredients on the packaging in the fresh bakery section of the supermarket. Bread, cakes, pastries etc are full of chemicals, preservatives and additives. These are more scary to me than fat and sugar. After eating these things on occasion I have noticed that I usually get a headache afterwards.
A simple tea cake can have over 20 different ingredients/chemicals in them. I dare readers to stop and look and read the ingredients on a cake or biscuits next time they are in Coles or Woolworths, you will be suprised.
I make my own afternoon teas and snacks for my kids, at least I know what is going in them and that they are not getting all the chemicals along with it.
This is a really helpful post. Cheers.
A few labelling peeves of mine:
Pretty much anything in a package that is labelled ‘All natural’ or ‘Made from Natural ingredients’ – I really don’t know what these terms mean any more…crude oil is natural
Lollies that are labelled ’100% Fat Free’ – whilst being true, clearly shows how misleading that kind of packaging is and how discerning you need to be with your product selection.
Foods labelled ‘Low GI’ that have no nutritional value (beyond being 115% of your daily energy requirements) – again doesn’t give the bigger picture…
No Adam, you bring up a whole lot of good points. What I liked is your discussion of the insulin process. My dietician explanied it but it has taken a long while to sink in, so again thanks.
“Guru” Eduardo,
You should change your pen name.
I like your writing style but your pseudonym destroys your credibility, completely.
And review your marketing strategy. What’s with monk pictures and prayers? Makes one think of a sect…
What a regrettable waste of talent.
Interesting information Craig – I must confess that I assumed 97% fat free was energy not weight based!
Re: comments from Anon N
I appreciate your comments Anon. And I guess its not apparent that the name Guru Eduardo is a joke. It’s my way of making fun of those self help guru’s that think they are the second coming of the ‘brilliant one’.
In my writings I use humor to get past people’s prejudices and beliefs. You might want to checkout my website by clicking on my name, if you want to understand where I’m coming from. In the meantime, I’ll leave with you with this… “if you haven’t got a screw loose, you might we wound too tight”
Smile, it looks good on you!
Great observation. People buy the products thinking that 0 g sat fat on potato chips are good enough.
In reality it is rounded up number per serving. 0.5 g per small serving. Usually, it is served much more (at least 3 times) than they are claimed. So 1.5 g per serving. Eating once a day and everyday can bring your saturated fat to 1 lb or half kg per year. Imagine getting sick and having that much saturated fat in body and wonder where it comes from when you are so careful about what you eat.
That is called 100% Bullshit, my friend. Welcome to business.
Again Rule NO. 1 Marketing…
Play to human behaviour: laziness…. Of course something in a box… called ‘lasgna’ ie. processed meat, cheese and layed in sugary tomato isnt going to be good for you! they had to call it something so HOW ABOUT LOW FAT.. LOL
Very interesting read, thanks Craig.
Also loved your post Adam – some food for thought.
Eye opener. Thanks Craig
Good information! I noticed a new item on our grocery store shelves…”Fat Free Half and Half”! Huh? Wouldn”t that make it…milk?…since the fat half of the Half and Half is cream (which is pretty much all fat) all you are left with is the milk? Am I getting this right?..Some of these marketing ploys are hilarious!
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