99% Fat Free: The Most Annoying Health Claim?

Hey, remember Snackwell's cookies?? My mom was a big fan of those back in the "low fat craze" days because hey, they were fat free. Didn't have any less calories than ordinary cookies though. I remember her eating half a box of them at a time and then wondering why she didn't lose weight. I think a lot of it is connotation..."fat" on a label brings up images of fatness, so people think "fat free" foods will make THEM fat free too. Too bad your body's smarter than that and can make it's own fat from pretty much whatever you stick in it.

Good post. I recently did a post on my blog about the bad rap that many dietary fats have gotten.

So many food manufacturers have just replaced the fat with refined sugar products, and America has become even fatter.

Brian

Brian Wansink and Pierre Chandon did a nice academic study of this question (published in December of last year: Can "Low Fat" Nutrition Labels Lead to Obesity? Journal of Marketing Research, 43 (4), 605-617). They show that consumers - expecially overweight ones - mistakenly associate "low fat" with "low calorie", just like you state. (In one experiment, they labeled odd-colored M and M's as "low-fat" to see how consumers reacted, Take a guess...)

I wonder if we'll reach a similar state with "low carb" labelling?

I see the same thing happening with trans fat-free labels on foods that never had trans fats in them to begin with. Anything to get attention, I guess. It works on a lot of people, though.

"99% fat free has to be one of the most idiotic labels known to mankind ..."

Hahah...that just made me audibly chortle. Excellent post. I totally agree...especially about how some labeling can prey on "food fears". So true.

why do we expect food manufacturers to educate us? why not learn for yourself and read your own labels.

lollies have always been fat free even before they put that label on it.

bethsheba said:
why do we expect food manufacturers to educate us?[...]

Makes me think of an argument I was having on another message board. I posted a recipe for cookies made with whole wheat flour, whole oats, pecans, cinnamon, baking powder, salt, olive oil, and for sweetening - two bananas.

Someone took me to task over the 83 calories per cookie - saying that it would be better to eat 55 calorie Oreos!! Another misunderstanding about nutrition - that all that matters is the quantity of calories rather than the quality of the fuel!

I actually have seen the same thing happening with "low carb" foods. Mostly, it's with food that already is pretty low in carbs that food manufacturers mess with a little more to make it carb free or 1g carbs...they can charge more for it that way. I know for sure they did it with salad dressings...1g carbs vs. 2g carbs for the regular stuff.

Yes these labels are annoying and somewhat deceiving, BUT... everyone really needs to educate themselves about the ins and outs of nutrition. Eating and good health is important to everyone. We need to wake up and become active participants in this fact.
www.thebestlifeever.com

It is amazing that we are still so afraid of FAT. There are good fats to eat (omega-3's) and we need a little fat in our diets. It is good to remember that fat free doesn't equal low calorie or healthy foods.

Calories in > Calories out (weight gain)

The only one who has your best interests in mind is you. Why are corporations "evil" because they have honest, if irrelevant, marketing techniques?

I just returned from the store with some "Campari" tomatoes. Pretty fancy tomatoes, on the stem, but at least they have more taste than, oh, baseballs. Anyway, they come in a carton, and emblazoned in big letters was the claim "Fat Free!"

Now, your average tomato is 0.33% fat, so perhaps Enza Zaden was able to breed even that trace amount out, but... I guess they will soon also tell us that they're trans-fat free.

I have to wonder why it is that in 2007 people still do not read food labels and somehow choose to believe the screaming marketing/advertising crap on the front of the box/bag instead. I mean, we're almost beyond the point now where there's any excuse for not reading food labels and understanding serving sizes. If you're not willing to do that, you pretty much deserve to be fat. It is not rocket science; I've been reading labels since I was 10 years old.

You know, the sad thing about this is if you take what is supposedly your typical overweight American and their diet, cutting down on fat as part of a diet strategy makes sense, for no other reason than fatty foods tend to be really calorie-dense. We can probably assume that most people who would be bamboozled by a screaming "99% FAT FREE!" thing on the front of a box aren't eating moderate amounts of high quality olive oil, avocado, and so on as their primary fat source.

Obviously, what good is a lowered fat intake if the food continues to be calorie dense because of nutritionally void carbohydrates.

The backlash against "low fat" may well be as sad, in the long term, as the slavish religious belief in it as a cure-all for obesity, because people typically do eat too much fat, as part of a calorie-rich, processed food diet.

I'm not a fan of the nanny state; really, the only solution for any of this is to get people to read nutritional labels and learn to ignore advertising and promotional text. If you're literate, there's really no excuse. I'd wager that every single person reading this blog reads nutritional labels instinctually and habitually; that's a habit worth passing on to kids at an early age.

it is always enlightening to read the views of others. It can be saddening too.

Eating is a necessity yes, a contributor to health yes, but also a pleasure, a treat for the senses, a joy.

I know the science and knowledge is important but can we not buy food because we like the taste. Surely it is quantities that matter. If we eat the food that we enjoy in moderate quantities and really focus on the enjoyment surely this will help us to a physically and certainly psychologically healthier lifestyle?

You should demand clearer labeling in the US.

In my country (.de), foods have usually have kcal/kj per 100g listed, and sometimes additionally the value for the size of the whole packing as well as the weight of fat, carb and protein per 100g. Very easy.

Some foods have no nutrition info at all (this is rather new here anyway, when I was a kid in the 80s it was nowhere to be found) but those are usually ones you know you have to avoid, like especially fat salami.

I occasionally buy some important US food, and the packing always looks like carnival or something. Lots of nonsense in big, logo-like letters (the same kind of "wow we're modern"-typeface used on your news channels, incredible). Now that's bad enough, but when I saw that "serving size" issue, it cracked me up. What a joke.

From what I've seen, US foods are engineered to be extremely tasty but that also makes them very, very rich in calories. Recalculated to a proper measure (kcal per 100g), values for most US food I've seen are unbeliavably high.

I meant I buy _imported_ US food, not important ;). Sorry..