Your mother may have told you ‘It’s what’s on the inside that counts’, but according to health warnings from a diverse group of scientists, when it comes to food packaging, the outside has a lot to answer for too. According to the wellness experts, our current system for labelling food is misleading the general public, and contributing to the global obesity epidemic.
Though the caloric content on two products may be identical, a growing body of research from anthropologists, evolution experts, nutrition specialists and others says that your body could use the energy from those foods very differently. For example, foods that seem to contain fewer calories but are more processed translate into body fat more easily.
According to Geoffrey Livesey, an independent nutritional biochemist who advises the UN Food and Agricultural Organization on standards for food labelling, ‘We’re misleading consumers. It’s promoting the wrong sorts of foods, which is not healthy.’ Livesey presented his message, which is supported by both animal- and human-subject research, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.
The current system for food labelling was started in the late 19th century, and underlies the classic ‘food pyramid’ created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1992 and since modified, which recommends a diet that is relatively high in breads and cereals relative to proteins and fats. However, the current system doesn’t allow for the form of carbohydrates, as the complexity of the carbohydrate, and how it is processed, has varying effects on your weight.
David Ludwig, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, points out, ‘You can have a bowl of corn flakes with no extra sugar added, or a bowl of sugar with no extra corn flakes. It might taste different, but biologically they’re comparable.’ According to Ludwig, when foods are closer to their natural state, they are harder to digest and metabolise and do not cause weight gain.
Harvard University’s Rachel Carmody adds, ‘We’re still at the beginning of a line of research that may provide people with more solid recommendations, but it doesn’t take an enormous amount of science for someone – when faced with a highly processed form of food relative to a food with similar raw ingredients in a less processed form – to know what the right choice is.’
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