Low-Carb Foods

Low-Carb Foods

In some ways the trend to low-fat and fat-free foods was beneficial; in other ways it was not. Nonfat milk is a good thing, but nonfat junk food is still junk food. Many consumers failed to notice that a low-fat cookie often has as many calories as the regular kind, and many assumed it was okay to eat the whole box.

Now the craze is for low-carbohydrate foods. If you’ve been to the grocery store lately, or even to McDonald’s or Blimpie, you’ve seen promotions for "low-carb" foods. Many breads, sandwiches, muffins, pasta, cereals, tortillas, pizza crusts, beer, cakes, cookies, and other foods now bear "low-carb" labels. While the health claims are seldom spelled out, the implications are clear.

If you’re following a low-carb diet (such as Atkins) that forbids or severely limits bread, pasta, and other starchy foods, especially those made with white flour, you might think, well, here’s a way to eat some bread and still stay on the diet. Indeed, many low-carb products are sold under the Atkins brand name. Or perhaps you’re not on any diet but are just calorie-conscious. You may conclude, logically enough, that a food lower in carbs is also lower in calories. Or you may buy the new stuff because you’re attracted to new products, and you think that there’s a law against false claims on food labels, so you conclude that low-carb claims must be (a) true and (b) meaningful.

In fact, "low-carb" is not what it seems. And any benefits these foods might offer for weight loss or nutrition are debatable, at best. If you replace carbohydrates with protein (that’s the main change), you still have just as many calories. Furthermore, the labels are, essentially, meaningless. The FDA has no definition of "low-carbohydrate" and has never approved any low-carb labels. Any food can be so labeled.
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