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I’d wanted to return to the relationship between marketing and the choices we make, a subject I’ve often visited. This column of five years ago contained the points I wanted to make; worth repeating as a reminder.
Many of us are trying to adopt a healthier lifestyle. You know, incorporating more exercise, making better food choices, cutting out or reducing the vices—it’s a slow process, and it demands a high degree of commitment.
(Copyright Glasbergen.com)
It isn’t easy; and there are as many steps backward as there are forward.
We live in a culture that has abandoned many of the traditional ways of living as we succumb to convenience and consumerism. We go for packages: meals that are full of chemical additives and oil.
We relish the imported fruit and vegetables that have travelled a long way to get to our supermarket shelves. How significantly has the nutritional value been diminished by its artificially induced shelf life?
We forget that we live on a tropical island with a climate that encourages fruit and vegetables, although the searing heat has damaged much of our produce. We have so spurned the local bounty that many species have also retreated—out of sight, only to be found in the most rural of communities.
Harried householders don’t have the time or the energy to take extra steps towards preparing meals made from ingredients that need prepping. Even if they mean well, it is either take-out fast food, or something concocted from various highly processed ingredients.
It really is a lot to manage in the daily hustle.
This is sounding like a lament to the lost art of living well—it’s not where I was heading. I was actually thinking of how even when we are trying to make the effort to be more conscious of what we are consuming, we can be misled by clever marketing.
I have written about the high sugar content of fruit juices in the wide range of local and imported brands that are staples. Across the board, one serving contains an astonishing level of calories and sugars. Yet they are promoted as healthy drinks with all sorts of lovely vitamins and goodness.
Yoghurt is among the foods that have gained popularity as healthy additions to a diet. Yoplait, probably the best known brand, carries a wide range of yoghurt flavours, targeted for children and adults in pretty packaging.
Basically, one of the single-serve cups has 150 calories with a total of 19 grams of sugar (13 grams were added). The light version has 90 calories and 10 grams of sugar, but it also has sucralose, the artificial sweetener. The Greek version has 100 calories, with seven grams of sugar.
I’d looked at the calories and sugar in several brands. What struck me was the way they are presented. La Yogurt is touted as a Whole Milk Probiotic with 25% less sugar, but it comes in at 160 calories, with 19 grams of sugar, of which 11 grams were added. Their Fat Free unsweetened version has 16 grams of sugar.
Dannon’s Light and Fit has 80 calories, with seven grams of sugar and sucralose. Oikos Triple Zero has 110 calories, six grams of sugar and stevia.
(Copyright Nicholson Cartoons)
I feel that when manufacturers use artificial sweeteners in their products to lower sugar values, they are maintaining the sweetness of the flavours, and therefore palates remain “addicted” to that taste. Unsurprisingly, artificial sweeteners have now lost their appeal in the health world.
Listings on the local brands were a bit vague. Mt St Benedict’s Pax says 14 grammes of sugar, and little else. Guiltless has 165 calories and 10 grams of sugar; and though its Low-Fat version says no sugar added, it doesn’t say what is there—but it’s 132 calories.
Yoghurt is not cheap. You can try dahi, maybe from one of the smaller supermarkets where you can get it for a fraction of the cost, because it is basic packaging, with no sugar added, and often it is being prepared on a regular basis and the shelf life may not be very long.
I like cooking with it, especially marinating meats; and it is a great substitute for buttermilk.
The big brands holler healthy at you, but check out the ingredients closely.
Look at ketchup for instance; we use a lot of it, but a tablespoon of it ranges from 15-20 calories and 3-4 grams of sugar. Two tablespoons of barbecue sauce contain between 50-80 calories and 10-17 grams of sugar.
A tablespoon of mayonnaise can have from 90 – 117 calories. Salad dressings, especially the creamy ones, carry from 25-50 calories in every 2 tbsp.
It might not seem like a lot, but your condiments alone can easily add a lot of sugar and calories that you don’t notice.
The people behind branding and marketing have richly exploited the yoghurt market—probiotic, rich in calcium, healthy, low-fat—using trigger words to reassure us we are making good choices.
What would we learn if fast food brands had to carry a nutrition list on their packaging, or on their display boards at the outlets? Would it affect your choice if you could see what a box of KFC tallied?
I’m just saying, beware of the labels; read the fine print before falling for the marketing gimmicks. It’s your health and ultimately, the responsibility is yours.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
