Don't Put Too Much Faith In Fortified Foods
The Wall Street Journal points out that fortified foods—yogurt with probiotics, pasta with calcium, orange juice with omega-3 fatty acid—have exploded into a $30+ billion a year industry, but
that doesn't mean they're good replacements for unprocessed foods.
"Processing destroys nutrients, and the more processing there is, the more destruction you get," says Marion Nestle, author and professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. "Fortification adds back some nutrients, so overall you're better off with a processed fortified food than a processed unfortified one. But a whole food is always going to be superior."
They point out that there's a history of beneficial fortifications in our food supply, like iodine in salt, niacin in bread, and folic acid in breads and cereals. The new offerings, however, are frequently more about marketing than good health. Just because something is fortified, for example, it doesn't mean it provides enough of the added nutrient as required by national guidelines. There's also a risk that consumers will choose more processed foods over whole foods thinking that the fortified processed option can fully replace all the nutrients in the whole food, when that's rarely the case.
Since fortified foods tend to be less filling and more calorie-dense than whole ones, consumers who pass on something like a cup of broccoli (about 30 calories) in favor of a cup of fortified juice (often as much as four times the calories, but less fulfilling) might actually end up eating more — and less healthily — throughout the day.
As with many health claims made by manufacturers of processed foods, it's always good to pay close attention to the details of the ingredients and not the claims on the packaging.
"Fortified Foods: How Healthy Are They?" [Wall Street Journal] (Thanks to Joanne!)
(Photo: Matt From London)
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Comments:
I am drinking a Diet Cherry 7up Antioxidant!!!11!!1 right now. It has 10% of my daily intake of vitamin E. I think I'm supposed to feel like I am Doing Something Good For Myself, but really I just wanted some non-nasty caffeine-free diet soda with dinner.
I saw an ad a few minutes ago for Special K protein shakes, now available in the "diet and nutrition aisle." Funny, I always thought that was the stuff on the outside edges of the grocery store.
In almost every case I would choose to have a cup of fortified juice over a cup of broccoli.
I wish I could tattoo this kind of stuff onto my wife's eyelids so every time she grabs more crap with supplements/fortified ingredients she will put it back on the shelf.
How does "yogurt with probiotics" count as a new fortified food? Before they put the 'probiotics' in there, its just sweetened milk. The "probiotic" yogurts haven't added anything particularly outlandish, ALL yogurt is probiotic by definition, and the practice of making yogurt is several millennia old.
@GitEmHomerJay!: Fortified wine is 'alcohol-enhanced' by the addition of spirits (distilled alcoholic beverages). Clearly, you're getting more bang for your buck!
sigh... I used to date a hippie vegetarian nutjob (she turned out to be a stalker) that would tell me this all the time.
My argument remains, I take a multivitamin daily to even it out.
"Fortification adds back some nutrients, so overall you're better off with a processed fortified food than a processed unfortified one. But a whole food is always going to be superior."
This is not a scientific statement. If he is going to claim to be a scientist, he needs to back up that statement with some actual facts. Especially if he is going to use words like "always" (something scientists virtually never do.) In what way is a fortified food "always" inferior to an unprocessed one? I'll take Vitamin D fortified pasteurized milk over the non-fortified, unpasteurized version any day of the week.
The article also has the statement "For instance, while numerous brands of protein-fortified pastas can contain nearly as much protein as a serving of meat, the meat is usually the healthier choice because the pastas are made from processed grains and are thus high in simple carbohydrates." Yes, if you are on a high-protein, low-carb diet for medical reasons, this statement is true. But most people do (and should) get most of their calories from carbohydrates. (It's not an unheatlhy diet if you are physically active.) The flour used in pasta has a rather low Glycemic Index, so as far as carbs go, it is not that bad for you. (Yes, it could use some fiber, but most protein-fortified pastas are either whole wheat, or are also fiber-fortified.) Certainly protein-fortified pasta is tons better for you than the "low-carb" greasy-plate special from a restaurant.
And what does it mean for a grain to be "processed"? Virtually all grains are completely inedible in their raw state in any significant quantities. Is the author saying we should avoid all grain products?
Yeah, old-timey fortification (D in milk, Bs in white bread, iodine in salt) is the awesomeburgers and prevents all kinds of horrific diseases and hooray massive health innovation of the 20th century!
However. When I was knocked up I had a nutrition profile done -- important to get your adequate B vitamins -- and since we only buy whole grains and whole-grain products, my B vitamins were all around like 220% of the RDA every single day.
B-vitamin fortification in white bread and cereals saves lives and is a great thing. But sticking with the whole grains in the first place obviates the need for it.
(And without calcium and iron fortification, I'd probably be dying of osteoperosis and anemia. I only get to feel morally superior about my B vitamins. Frankly I think I'm at risk for scurvy half the year because I'm so bad about citrus fruit!)
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): yay for the vitamin D fortified milk! my fridge was old and couldn't keep milk cold enough to not spoil quickly so i quit drinking it for a few months. i went to the doctor two weeks ago and had my diabetic blood tests done - since february i went from normal vitamin D levels to absurdly dangerously low. nothing else changed about my diet.
new house has new fridge and i went right out and bought milk on the way home from closing. we'll see what the blood tests say in a few months but i bet my vitamin D levels go back to normal
@sirwired: This is indeed a scientific statement. There are plenty of studies showing that people who eat less refined food are healthier, weigh less, have lower risk for cancers and heart disease, etc. So when Dr Nestle (she's a professor of nutrition and public health at NYU) makes the claim "always," I'll give her a pass, because it's virtually always true.
Unpasteurized milk is more nutritious than fortified milk. The reason milk is fortified is to replace vitamins lost through pasteurization, transportation & storage, which make modern industrial milk a processed food. There are public health advantages to modern milk processing, but this exception doesn't give a pass to the huge variety of super-manipulated functional foods one sees at the grocery these days. The reason foods such as flour and milk are fortified is because processing removes their inherent nutrition.
Her example of the pasta is that these pastas are made with refined flour, meaning they are stripped of fiber and nutrients. Many people experience unhealthy blood sugar spikes and other problems when they eat large quantities of refined starches or sugars, including protein-fortified pasta. Prof. Nestle is not speaking to people on low-carb diets. She is saying that for the average person, they are better off eating minimally processed foods, i.e. steak instead of a highly synthesized pasta. A protein-enhanced pasta available in my local grocery is made from white flour, added bran, added vitamins, and soy and wheat protein. It is more like an agglomeration of supplements than a food. Her point is: If the average person consistently makes the choice for whole foods over processed ones, s/he will have better nutrition and better health.
A grain is processed when it has its bran removed, making it white, such as white flour and white rice and most corn meals. She didn't say "raw," she said "processed." Dr Nestle is speaking of the wide variety of highly processed quasi-foods available these days, things like soy & grain milks with DHA (but are mainly water and fractionated bean products, starches and sugar), so-called yogurts with various probiotics (but mainly sugar, flavoring, coloring, stabilizers and supplements), and the increasing number of breakfast cereals and other products claiming "contains whole grain" on the package, even though they are mainly refined flour, sugar and salt with a small percentage of whole grain added for marketing purposes.
Few of my friends are comfortable shopping, preparing and eating a simple whole food diet. They have been raised thinking that food is this complicated matter of figuring out which of the marketing buzzwords of the month will keep them healthy and happy. They don't eat food for its own sake and they have few workable notions of proper nutrition, economy or preparation. They tend to be suspicious of food, and orthorexic.
@ChuckECheese: A great post.
I just wanted to add that I enjoyed the delicious irony of someone named ChuckECheese writing it. :D
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Yeah, oldtimey fortification is pretty awesome. Especially folic acid in grains; when I couldn't stomach any kind of pills or supplements during the miserable first 3 or 4 months of this pregnancy and could basically eat nothing but toast and plain pasta, it was really nice to know that I wasn't putting my child at super-high risk of neural tube defects.
Hmm so they are saying juice like cranberry juice is bad for me even though it has all those antioxidants?
What if I am drinking the juice instead of soda ? (i dont i tend to stick with water but just used it as an example).
My 8 year old son loves broccoli. If he brings lunch to school, it includes broccoli. He owns a "Yay, It's Broccoli" t-shirt. This morning, I thought I was supposed to make his lunch and had the broccoli already cut when I realized I was mistaken. My son looked at the pile of broccoli and asked if he could have it for breakfast, so I made him broccoli-cheese omlet with broccoli on the side.
I have a healthy, never fail, go-to vegetable to feed my kid. I'm one lucky dad.
Anyone interested in this topic should read some of Michael Pollan's work, most notably "In Defense of Food" and maybe also Omnivore's Dilemma.
He uses a great word for the line of thinking this WSJ article is talking about: "nutritionism." Among other things nutritionism embodies the idea that you can separate the nutrients from the whole food and have them do the same good on their own as they do in the whole food. The trouble is that the complex interactions of the whole is often what actually makes the nutrients useful to our body.
Shoving extra vitamins and minerals into food and drinks generally makes them taste worse anyway. I might as well take a Centrum and buy the good tasting food. (If I'm going to buy something unhealthy it should at least taste good.)
It's interesting that the article mentions "probiotics" in yogurt and yet fails to mention that the buzzword used is "Prebiotic".
I would hope that when one sees or hears things like "contains Pre- and Pro-biotics" one asks what the heck a "pre-biotic" is and why they added it to your food.
Personally I like my yogurt the old-fashioned way, so I make it myself. That way, if I want to throw in some "pre-biotics" I can, not that adding a shot of metamucil to yogurt sounds appealing or anything...
@Michael Lerch: Because another journalist is such an expert in biochemistry that we should read an entire book by him.
@Michael Lerch: @morlo: Marion Nestle's books get into detail about the difficulties of food labeling - even regarding bacterial contamination and safe handling instructions. Thoroughly researched and fascinating reading, especially if you're interested in a perspective from inside the FDA (where she used to work). I've found Safe Food and Food Politics to be extremely interesting and relevant.
@ChuckECheese: Bravo indeed. I can't recommend her book "Food Politics" enough. She's not some isolated academic writing in and for the ivory tower. It chronicles her job in the government trying to write responsible food policy
@ludwigk: They're talking about the ones with a;; these "new" cultures added to them. The l. casei immunitas and what not.
They're still all made, like any other American yogurt, with stabilizers and gums and artificial flavor and what not. And there's not enough research to prove their claims about their specific baterial culture. Plus the yogurts labeled as "probiotic" all cost way more than regular yogurt.
Buy an all natural yogurt, one of the Greek style ones. Or, better yet, make your own.
@dohtem: And taking a multivitamin is not as good for you as getting the nutrition from foods.
There are a whole host of complimentary chemicals available in foods, not just the 20 or so vitamins that we've managed to isolate so far and put into pill form. Some vitamins actually need the help of those complimentary chemicals in order to work in your body.
90% of the nutrition in your multivitamin ends up in your toilet. That's not because you're getting too much of said vitamin, it's because your body isn't absorbing the vitamins properly without being part of the foods they're naturally found in.
What does this mean for my fortified wine?