Baked Snacks Not Necessarily Healthier

jeffstier@gmail.com · medicine forum beginner Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 6

Health Facts And Fears

June 30, 2006

Baked Snacks Not Necessarily Healthier

By Jeff Stier, Esq.

"Baked" chips and crackers are all the rage today.

Egged on by the food police, people think they are doing the healthier
thing -- and are willing to sacrifice and eat the baked snacks.
However, those sacrifices are in vain, since baked and regular chips
often have the same amount of calories. Worse, people expecting to
avoid weight gain with baked items may end up eating more crackers --
and thus more calories -- because they think they are eating a diet
food. "Hey, it's baked, not fried. I'm being so good!"

But in fact, thirty-one grams of Nabisco's Wheat Thins Baked Snack
Original have the same 150 calories (50 from fat, 1 from saturated fat)
as Nabisco's Wheat Thins Original. Whether you add the oil in the
batter or in the frying pan, it still "winds up in the same place," as
they say.

The food industry will market whatever consumers will buy, whether it's
a "super-sized" Big Mac or a "healthy" cracker. They are like any other
industry -- responding to incentives. Don't blame the food companies
for their slick marketing -- they are just doing what they do. But now
that we know what they do, we should be wary of what the food police do
-- scare us into making decisions that don't do us much good, like
switching to baked to assuage our fatty-foods guilt.

Sure, if the baked chips are whole wheat as opposed to the more fun
"original," they'll pack a more nutritional bang for the calorie. But
they won't do much to help keep you as thin as those wheat thins.

Whether you are a consumer of crackers or of dubious "health news," the
golden rule still applies: buyer beware.

Jeff Stier, Esq., is an associate director of the American Council on
Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com), which has
reported before on nutrition labels that lack context.

This information was found online at:
http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.788/news_detail.asp

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