http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/16/health/healthy-foods-confusion-study/index.html (http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/16/health/healthy-foods-confusion-study/index.html)
'Healthy' foods have most of us confused, survey finds
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(CNN)Determining what exactly is a "healthy" food has us all scratching our heads.
A new survey suggests that most Americans are confused about what counts as a healthy food choice.
About eight in 10 survey respondents said they have found conflicting information about what foods to eat and what foods to avoid -- and more than half of them said the conflicting information has them second-guessing the choices they make, according to the International Food Information Council Foundation's annual Food and Health survey (http://www.foodinsight.org/2017-food-and-health-survey), which was released Tuesday.
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Looking past the front of food labels 01:36
"I wasn't that surprised to see that 78% reported that they encountered conflicting information, but our follow-up question to that had, I think, a really interesting data point in it, and that was that about half -- so around 56% -- say that this conflicting information causes them to doubt the choices that they're making," said Liz Sanders, director of research and partnerships at the foundation and a co-author of the survey.
"I think that shows that for at least half of our respondents, this conflicting information was leading to some doubt that made it harder to sort through all the conflicting information," she said. "Americans rely on many different sources for their information when it comes to what foods to eat and what foods to avoid. Not all of these sources are really highly trusted, and it is likely that these sources share inconsistent information."
What America thinks is 'healthy'
The survey involved 1,002 American adults, who completed it online in March. Nearly 60% of respondents ranked being "high in healthy components or nutrients" as one of the top three factors for a "healthy" food.
Slightly more than half of respondents ranked "free from artificial ingredients, preservatives or additives" among the top three factors, and nearly 50% ranked "part of an important food group that I need to build a healthy eating style" among the top three factors.
Factors such as "organic" and "non-GMO," or genetically modified, were less likely to be ranked.
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Food labels decoded 02:32
The researchers found that there appeared to be much confusion about what eating habits are healthy and what aren't. Many respondents said they turn to their friends and family for guidance on food choices, even though they see dietitians and health care professionals as the most trusted sources for guidance.
"Trusted nutrition information is hard to find, and the public is inundated with conflicting messages, including from dubious sources," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who was not involved in the new survey.
"Looking at the survey results, it's positive that the public recognizes the importance of foods being high in healthy components, nutrients, and part of an important food group and correctly pay less attention to criteria like GMO or organic," he said.
When considering the healthfulness of individual specific components and ingredients, most survey respondents placed vitamin D, fiber and whole grains at the top of the list and saturated fats at the bottom.
When it comes to unsaturated fats (https://www.choosemyplate.gov/saturated-unsaturated-and-trans-fats), an age gap emerged in who found those fats to be "healthy." About 50% of survey respondents 65 and older called unsaturated fats healthy, whereas just 33% of those 18 to 34 did.
"The low recognition of the importance of healthy fats is disappointing," Mozaffarian said.
Older respondents were also more likely to label saturated fats as unhealthy, which most experts agree (https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientimages/000307.htm) is correct, according to the survey.
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The spread of conflicting information and even misinformation might be playing a role in America's obesity epidemic (http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/02/health/obesity-in-u-s-fast-facts/), said Dr. Roxanne Sukol, preventive medicine specialist at the Wellness Institute at Cleveland Clinic, who was not involved in the new survey. She did not find the survey results to be surprising.
"Two-thirds of us are overweight or obese (https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity)," Sukol said.
"Fifty percent of Americans have either diabetes or prediabetes by age 65 now," she said, referencing data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pubs/statsreport14/national-diabetes-report-web.pdf)(PDF). "That means that whatever we're doing, it's really not working. So it's proof that yes, in fact, people are confused. They're not making choices that benefit their health, and it's not because they're not trying."
As with any survey, there are limitations, and all of the data in this survey came from self-reports, Sanders said.
"We're limited because we can't really examine how people are behaving; we just know how they say they're behaving. So that is one limitation with any self-reported survey," she said. However, Sanders added that since this survey is conducted annually, the data allow trends to emerge.
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Photos: American diet trends
"Our biggest trend over time has to do with purchasing factors, and we know that taste and price have always been the top two factors that have driven purchasing, with healthfulness following behind in the third spot," Sanders said. "In terms of what is healthy, we know that it doesn't always beat out what tastes the best or what has the best price, in terms of impacting a food purchase."
Why 'healthy' can be confusing
" 'Healthy' is a term that's at the core of so many of our conversations around food, but there's still a lot of debate about what is healthy, and we see this around the FDA's recent efforts to update guidelines for the term 'healthy' and its use in food labeling," Sanders said.
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Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (https://www.fda.gov/food/guidanceregulation/guidancedocumentsregulatoryinformation/labelingnutrition/ucm520695.htm) launched a public process to redefine what the word "healthy" means when it's used on food labels.
For a food product to be marketed as healthy, it should have low levels of total and saturated fat, sodium and cholesterol, and have at least 10% of the daily requirements for vitamins, fiber and other nutrients, according to the FDA's current criteria (https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/UCM521692.pdf) (PDF).
The Cleveland Clinic's Sukol thinks the word "healthy" is confusing and should be replaced with the term "nourishing," as some processed foods have been marketed as "healthy."
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These foods aren't as healthy as you think01:49
"The big problem is that we've been told that we can nourish ourselves with these ultraprocessed foods, and we cannot. They don't nourish us. That's why I believe that obesity is (at least in part) a malnourished state, as opposed to the standard message being propagated in our society, which is that obesity is an overindulged state," Sukol said. "But if that were true, then diets would work."
While we can't seem to find a way to define what is "healthy," our brains innately respond to what is "nourishing," Sukol said. For instance, if you eat a big bag of candy at the movies and then go to dinner, you probably would still have an appetite for a meal.
"But if they sold roasted Brussels sprouts and grilled salmon at the movie theater, you wouldn't go out for dinner afterwards, because you would be satisfied. Your brain knows the difference," Sukol said. "If there's a conflict between what we think we know and what our brain is telling us. We don't trust our brain. We trust what we think we learned. So I'm not surprised at all that everyone is confused."
'It's everything else around the food, too'
Sukol points to the way in which food products have been marketed as being associated with some of the confusion and conflicting messaging around what is "healthy."
"It's everything else around the food, too. Another great example is the way shopping carts are constructed. So, if shopping carts were designed to support our spending more time in the fresh produce section than anywhere else ... then they would have shelves in the front, and you would access each shelf individually and fill it with produce and then go to the next shelf," Sukol said.
"But it's not that way. Everyone uses the baby section for produce, and then when that's full, then we use the rest of the shopping cart to put boxes and cans and bottles in. In other words, all the processed stuff, with some exceptions," she said. "The shape itself is designed to carry boxes."
To get reliable information on which foods contribute to an overall healthy diet, Sanders recommended consulting the federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans (https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/), which are published every five years. The latest guidelines were published (http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/07/health/2015-dietary-guidelines/) last year.
"That's kind of the gold standard in terms of consolidating everything we know from peer-reviewed research and getting expert opinion," she said.
This article while somewhat interesting does not address the underlying causes of this confusion. Anyone have comments here?
I say I would agree. What I have seen is the marketing/advertising firms ramp up the propaganda of being "healthy" with creative labeling giving false impressions to consumers.
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Power is the ability to define reality and to have other people respond to your definition as if it were their own. - Dr. Wade Nobles
Dr. Sebi advised: if it is advertised on tv don't eat it.
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Power is the ability to define reality and to have other people respond to your definition as if it were their own. - Dr. Wade Nobles
It's to cause confusion by design so you get frustrated and you say "F" it, and you just eat all and anything. Which is what they want since most of the food stuff corporations have their hands in the healthy and unhealthy food markets. They don't care about your health just that you spend money on their products, healthy or not.
I think a lot stems back to critical thinking. I've spoken to groups about diet and health and those who are confused tend to be the ones who 1) rely on television and mainstream media for information 2) believe advertisements are truthful and don't understand that they are more often than not lies constructed to psychologically influence spending habits and nothing more and 3) use conflicting information as justification to pick the option that is most unhealthy.
Case in point, I have a neighbor dying of cancer. She hasn't picked up a book. She hasn't talked to anyone other than her doctor. She has stated categorically that she believes if there were public health information she should know, it would be on television.
When I gave her health information from alternative medical sources, it was easier for her to rationalize her bad behavior than it was to contemplate shifting anything about her lifestyle. Her doctor told her to use Dove soap because it's healthy. I read to her an article about how toxic Dove soap is and why she should avoid it and most commercially advertised soaps. She couldn't believe her doctor didn't know this. She couldn't conceive of the fact that he likely doesn't do any research at all and also just recommends what he's incentivized to recommend not what is healthy.
She went to the drive-thru at McDonald's with me in the car. I listed off the ingredients in her coffee ice cream drink. Then I crossed referenced the ingredients with a site that lists known carcinogens. I told her she shuld do this with every food but she elects not to.
In all three of these cases, this woman always defaults to the same thing. I have met masses of people who made similar statements over the years. Those clusters of statements include:
There's so much conflicting information out there you just never can know what to do. So you just have to do what you do and hope, pray, wait to see what will happen.
It's like everything causes cancer.
You got to die of something.
I've been eating this way for years and nothing has happened to me.
( in the case of my neighbor I said you got cancer how can you possibly say nothing has happened to you? But I digress).
I have a differentiator follow up to those statements that really gets to the heart of whether people are confused or not.
My follow-up is this.
No one ever questions the health benefits of apples or broccoli or pure water and a ton of other whole foods and nutrients. Everything is not subjective. There are some absolutes. If there is conflicting information out there about the benefits of coffee, sugar. fried food, meat, etc etc. Why not err on the side of caution and leave it out of your diet. If you leave the questionable foods out then isn't that giving you a better fighting chance than erring on the side of 'I know I've been told this is bad for me but maybe if I keep eating it nothing will happen'?
People with this mindset fall into two groups.
Those with a fundamental failure to understand the difference between chronic and acute health effects. Those whose brains can't possibly conceive of the fact that it's not one single act that causes Illness but the cumulative effect of each of the acts.
The second group is comprised of people who want excuses to stay the same, so they pretend there is too much confusion to make a choice. But in that way they are making a choice. They're making the choice to rationalize behavior they can't come to terms with changing.
In both cases the illusion of confusion and indecipherable conflicting information is just an excuse.
Basic critical thinking skills and logic make the choices very clear.
Sent from my SM-J700T using Abibitumi Kasa mobile app (http://r.tapatalk.com/byo?rid=88213)
QuoteBestVeganChef;234097 wrote: I think a lot stems back to critical thinking. I've spoken to groups about diet and health and those who are confused tend to be the ones who 1) rely on television and mainstream media for information 2) believe advertisements are truthful and don't understand that they are more often than not lies constructed to psychologically influence spending habits and nothing more and 3) use conflicting information as justification to pick the option that is most unhealthy.
Case in point, I have a neighbor dying of cancer. She hasn't picked up a book. She hasn't talked to anyone other than her doctor. She has stated categorically that she believes if there were public health information she should know, it would be on television.
When I gave her health information from alternative medical sources, it was easier for her to rationalize her bad behavior than it was to contemplate shifting anything about her lifestyle. Her doctor told her to use Dove soap because it's healthy. I read to her an article about how toxic Dove soap is and why she should avoid it and most commercially advertised soaps. She couldn't believe her doctor didn't know this. She couldn't conceive of the fact that he likely doesn't do any research at all and also just recommends what he's incentivized to recommend not what is healthy.
She went to the drive-thru at McDonald's with me in the car. I listed off the ingredients in her coffee ice cream drink. Then I crossed referenced the ingredients with a site that lists known carcinogens. I told her she shuld do this with every food but she elects not to.
In all three of these cases, this woman always defaults to the same thing. I have met masses of people who made similar statements over the years. Those clusters of statements include:
There's so much conflicting information out there you just never can know what to do. So you just have to do what you do and hope, pray, wait to see what will happen.
It's like everything causes cancer.
You got to die of something.
I've been eating this way for years and nothing has happened to me.
( in the case of my neighbor I said you got cancer how can you possibly say nothing has happened to you? But I digress).
I have a differentiator follow up to those statements that really gets to the heart of whether people are confused or not.
My follow-up is this.
No one ever questions the health benefits of apples or broccoli or pure water and a ton of other whole foods and nutrients. Everything is not subjective. There are some absolutes. If there is conflicting information out there about the benefits of coffee, sugar. fried food, meat, etc etc. Why not err on the side of caution and leave it out of your diet. If you leave the questionable foods out then isn't that giving you a better fighting chance than erring on the side of 'I know I've been told this is bad for me but maybe if I keep eating it nothing will happen'?
People with this mindset fall into two groups.
Those with a fundamental failure to understand the difference between chronic and acute health effects. Those whose brains can't possibly conceive of the fact that it's not one single act that causes Illness but the cumulative effect of each of the acts.
The second group is comprised of people who want excuses to stay the same, so they pretend there is too much confusion to make a choice. But in that way they are making a choice. They're making the choice to rationalize behavior they can't come to terms with changing.
In both cases the illusion of confusion and indecipherable conflicting information is just an excuse.
Basic critical thinking skills and logic make the choices very clear.
Sent from my SM-J700T using Abibitumi Kasa mobile app (http://r.tapatalk.com/byo?rid=88213)
Totally agree. There are many things at play here. Between marketing ploys and trust of doctors and/or government agencies to "protect" them, people do not engage any critical thinking in decision making. Convenience is also a factor. 'Most' healthy meals take time to prepare. The ability to shake and pour or zap in the microwave has created a generation of people that get the majority of their foods through a [drive-through] window or out of a box. We must also acknowledge that many people of color live in food deserts and don't have access to healthy options.
People also have the "I have to die somehow mindset" or they consider taking on an illness as a rite of passage, (their mama has it, both sets of grandparents, five aunties and a play cousin). Keys to success are to: stay away from packaged foods as much as possible. Learn how to read the packages if you do buy packaged/processed food. Shop on the perimeter of the grocery store aisles and get your water intake up, and exercise in. And lastly, stop listening to everything your doctor tells you.
Abibifahodie
QuoteKRS2;234115 wrote: Totally agree. There are many things at play here. Between marketing ploys and trust of doctors and/or government agencies to "protect" them, people do not engage any critical thinking in decision making. Convenience is also a factor. 'Most' healthy meals take time to prepare. The ability to shake and pour or zap in the microwave has created a generation of people that get the majority of their foods through a [drive-through] window or out of a box. We must also acknowledge that many people of color live in food deserts and don't have access to healthy options.
People also have the "I have to die somehow mindset" or they consider taking on an illness as a rite of passage, (their mama has it, both sets of grandparents, five aunties and a play cousin). Keys to success are to: stay away from packaged foods as much as possible. Learn how to read the packages if you do buy packaged/processed food. Shop on the perimeter of the grocery store aisles and get your water intake up, and exercise in. And lastly, stop listening to everything your doctor tells you.
Abibifahodie
Totally agree except with rare exceptions it's best to stop listening to EVERYTHING your doctor (MD) tells you.