Zero Calories and Other Misleading Advertising

I recently read about a person who gained weight eating a diet of air popped popcorn with a butter flavored zero-calorie cooking spray.  Let's do a little math.  Three cups of air popped popcorn has 93 calories.  Zero calorie cooking spray has zero calories.  Most nutritionists recommend that women consume no fewer than 1200 calories per day when dieting to lose weight.  To consume just 1200 calories per day on this diet, she would have to eat 38.7 cups of popcorn.  It would be reasonable to assume that if someone was going to actually gain weight on this diet, she would need to consume considerably more than 38 cups of popcorn. 

So what is wrong with this story?  Zero calorie is not necessarily zero calorie.  If there are less than 5 calories or 0.5 grams of fat in a single serving of something, the company is legally allowed to advertise that product as zero-calorie and fat-free.  So cooking sprays usually define a single serving as a 1/4 or 1/3 second spray.  We are guessing that even our Metabolic Warriors don't have fingers that quick!  In reality most cooking sprays have about 7 calories per 1 second spray.  Still not too bad... until you consider that the person in the above story was using almost an entire can of butter flavored "zero calorie" cooking spray on a single serving of popcorn (3 cups).  So the 93 calorie serving just grew to around 800 calories. 

Extreme and maybe ridiculous example? Yes, but the point is that many food companies use legal but misleading food labeling to trick consumers into believing that a food is healthy.   This can then lead consumers to make misinformed choices.  For example, a study conducted by the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland found that people will usually serve themselves more of a food that claims to be "reduced fat" or "low-fat" or in some other way "healthier" than the standard fare.  People often believe that foods labeled as "healthier" in some way can be consumed guilt-free in large quantities without weight gain or other consequences.  However, another consideration with foods that are labeled as "low-fat" or "reduced fat" is that they often make up for the fat by adding more sugar, or other fillers to simulate the taste or texture that people are used to in the standard version. Again this can lead to eating larger quantities of food to feel satisfied. 

It is far better to eat a diet of real foods and to allow yourself an occasionl indulgence of the real version of your favorite treat rather than eating large quantities of unhealthful foods.