MONDAY, June 10, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Consumers need to go beyond popular "low-fat" food labels to look at the nutritional content and calories-per-serving behind the noisy promotions crowding supermarket shelves.
In particular, we need to be aware that olestra, a fat substitute found in potato chips and other snack foods, reduces our body's absorption of several nutrients, including vitamins A, D and E.
These are the messages of a new American Heart Association (AHA) statement about fat substitutes, which appears in tomorrow's issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
The simple fact is that Americans, despite eating less fat, are still growing markedly fatter, the experts say.
"We are seeing obesity occurring at younger and younger ages, and [Type II] diabetes is now occurring in children at very high rates," says Judith Wylie-Rosett, a member of the AHA's Nutrition Committee and the author of the statement. "We often think that, if we serve low-fat products, it will take care of the obesity problem, but it won't. It needs to be both calorie expenditure and modulating calorie intake."
Dr. Henry Anhalt, medical director of the Kids Weight-Down Program at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City, sees evidence of the skyrocketing obesity epidemic in his office every day. Some recent examples he cites: a 15-year-old patient weighing 350 pounds who suffers from Type II diabetes, and a 4-year-old weighing 200 pounds who had to be wheeled into the office.
By the year 2030, an estimated 90 percent of children will be overweight, and half will be obese, Anhalt says.
At the same time, low-fat products are glutting the market. By 1998, there were more than 5,000 reduced-fat, processed food products on supermarket shelves, according to the statement.
All this emphasis on low-fat has served to obscure a necessary emphasis on calories.
"It's a tremendous marketing tool, and the public is so gullible that they buy it without turning the package around and seeing what it translates into in terms of calories," Anhalt says.
Wylie-Rosett looked at 13 different fat substitutes currently on the market, measuring their effect on digestion, absorption (movement of food from the intestines to the circulatory system), and metabolism of vitamins and minerals.
Olestra distinguished itself from the other products in that it reduces the movement of certain nutrients from the intestines into the bloodstream. And although Procter & Gamble, which manufactures the product under the brand name Olean, has compensated for this effect by restoring the nutrients in question, Wylie-Rosett wonders whether we are missing other important phytochemicals.
"It's an unanswered question," says Wylie-Rosett.
"We've taken care of the nutrients that have a dietary requirement and that's about as far as we've gone," says Suzette Middleton, a senior nutritionist at Procter & Gamble. "None of the potential phytochemicals have been established as having much meaning. If it turned out any of those nutrients were required, it would behoove us to make sure we offset those."
Overall, the association's statement "was very balanced," Middleton says. "I think, overall, they concluded that within the context of an overall diet as well as lifestyle, reduced-fat foods -- including those with olestra -- can play a benfiical role."
The increasing number of low-fat foods are not always bad, though the long-term health benefits are not clear. It's that the right choices need to be made and portion sizes need to be taken into account, Wylie-Rosett says.
Many low-fat products are good options, Wylie-Rosett adds. She cites as examples a large salad with a low-fat dressing and naturally low-fat foods such as fruits and vegetables.
The best advice is to stick to the American Heart Association's pyramid guideline and limit your total fat to less than 30 percent of total calories, Wylie-Rosett says.
"Keep a varied diet which has nutritious foods in it," Anhalt says. "But the concept that you can eat cookies that are sugar-free or low-fat ice cream is missing the forest for the trees."
What To Do
Here are the American Heart Association's dietary guidelines.
For differing viewpoints on olestra, check out the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Olestra home page.
