 | Smart Snacking It goes without saying that fresh fruit, vegetables, and whole grains are good snacks. But snack foods you find in the supermarket — cookies, crackers, and chips — can be a mixed bag. Many are made with partially hydrogenated oils, highly processed flours, and large quantities of sugar. To find the healthiest choices, you'll need to be a bit of a label sleuth, reading the fine print on ingredient lists and Nutrition Facts panels. The goal is to search out snacks made with healthy oils, whole grains or whole-grain flours, and a respectable amount of sugar, preferably the fruit variety. Here are some questions to consider, followed by a few examples of popular snacks made with healthy ingredients. Does it contain trans fat?
Chances are the label doesn't say. But you can gain some idea of how much trans fat a product contains by looking at the list of ingredients. If you find any hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils on the list, the food does contain trans fat and is best avoided. Some sly manufacturers are now using the words vegetable shortening or margarine on the ingredient list, which also means trans fat. Since ingredients are listed by order of weight (or amount used), you'll be able to get a ballpark idea of how much hydrogenated oil was used to make the snack. If partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil is at the top of the list — one of the first few ingredients — then the snack has a large percentage of trans fats. Partially hydrogenated oils that are at or near the bottom of a long list don't account for much of the end product. Some companies actually mention the percentage in the ingredient list. The label may say "contains less than 2 percent partially hydrogenated corn, cottonseed or safflower oil." Another way to get an estimate of trans fat is to look at labels that divulge the type of fat in a food. If the manufacturer breaks down fats by category (saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated), you can add up these amounts. If the total doesn't match the total grams of fat listed on the label, chances are most of the unaccounted-for fat is of the trans variety. The good news is that many food companies are scrambling to reformulate cakes, cookies, and chips without trans fats. And food labels are going to disclose the amount of trans fats on the Nutrition Facts panel. This will put additional pressure on manufacturers to remove trans fats from their products. Is it made with whole grains?
Labels don't always come right out and boast about the use of whole grains. Look to the ingredients list for whole-wheat flour (not wheat flour), oats, corn, rye, and so on. And look to the Nutrient Facts panel for total grams of fiber. Whole grains contain large amounts of fiber. The more whole grains used in a snack, the higher the fiber content per serving. Don't be fooled by the liberal use of wheat in a snack title. Wheat flour is not whole-grain flour. Is it full of sugar?
Whole grains are great ingredients. So too are unsaturated oils like canola, safflower, and olive. But if you pair these ingredients with large amounts of sugars, you can negate the health benefits of the grains and healthy fats. There are two words to describe sugar: empty calories. Ingredients like granulated sugar, brown sugar, and honey provide calories to a food but nothing in the way of nutrients. That's not to say that you need to avoid every speck of sugar you encounter. But some snack foods, particularly a lot of the fat-free snacks, are loaded with empty sugar calories. Better to find a snack food made with little or no sugar: popcorn, roasted nuts, whole-grain crackers — such as Ak-Mak 100% Whole Wheat Sesame Crackers or Wasa Original Hearty Rye Crispbread — and whole-grain toast with peanut butter. What about fruit sweeteners?
To the body, calories obtained from fruit sugar aren't much different energy-wise from the calories in a scoop of white or brown sugar. But when whole fruit is used to sweeten a dish, you do gain nutritional benefits from the fruit. So a cookie sweetened with applesauce will gain some fiber and other nutrients from the applesauce. A cereal sweetened with fresh-grated apple will have more nutrients than a cereal sweetened with granulated sugar. The question gets a bit stickier when you talk about the use of juice concentrates (apple, grape) to sweeten foods. In truth, there probably isn't much difference calorie-wise between concentrates and granulated sugar. And concentrates don't contain fiber like whole fruits. But in the end, many of the fruit-sweetened snacks just contain less overall sugar than traditional snacks. And that's the point: the less sugar the better. From EAT, DRINK AND BE HEALTHY by Walter C. Willett, M.D. Copyright © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.  | If you would like to purchase Dr. Willett's book from Amazon.com, click here. |
Last updated January 21, 2004
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