India's middle class are growing around the middle. People are starting to take action, and a market for diet and healthy foods has opened up. Unfortunately this market is partly filled with lies and misinformation.
The packet which offends me the most is 'Haldirams diet chiwda". For the benefit of non-Indians, Haldirams is one of India's biggest snacks and confectionary brands, and chiwda is a kind of crispy snack. The brand is generally well regarded for quality, but the snack in question is anything but a diet food. In fact, before concerns about gluten, I used this snack to gain weight. The justification for labelling this particular pack as diet is a fractional reduction in calories and fat compared to the non-diet version, but this doesn't match the claims.
From the front of the packet it's bold:
"Diet"
"Snac Lite!"
"Sensible snacking"
"Mild taste" (ok I'll agree with this one)
The imagery follows up the words; the packet is mostly green (the colour of healthy) with thin vertical stripes... even the packet needs a slimming effect. The detail is not subtle, an image of a tape measure wrapped around the pack. The tape measure continues on the back of the pack, with little but a repetition of the same claim "healthy namkeen" (snack). Apparently this is part of a series of healthy snacks.
The problems begin at the nutrition label... it's not actually healthy. It has 516 calories per 100g (774 calories per bag) of which most come from white rice and palm oil. This is about as far as you can get from healthy, bar the non diet version of the same snack, or foods flavoured with lead, arsenic, maybe a little mercury? It gets worse, it's not just the high calorie density from nutritionally poor foods, it's the "mild taste". If you're a bit greedy like me you can easily finish an entire pack in one sitting, that's a meals worth of calories (1/3 of daily intake). This combination makes it, to my mind, one of the most dangerously misleading foods available.
There are many other high calorie density foods available, what catches my attention here is also the low quality of the food. Cashew nuts at 550 calories per 100g are high, but pro rata match your RDA of protein, iron, magnesium, and nearly vitamin B6 and potassium. This product doesn't contain cashews. It's white rice, which as I have covered before, doesn't have much to offer beyond starch. A big chunk of the energy comes from fat, 28% by weight. The fat is palm oil, which is one of the least healthy and most environmentally destructive oils available. The rainforests of Indonesia will be destroyed and replaced by a barren monoculture thanks to this oil. Of the remaining ingredients only the 15% gram flour (chickpea) offers some salvation. Chickpea has a reasonable protein content for a starchy food, and is digested slightly more slowly. The remaining macro ingredients are starch and sugar, as if this product needed added sugar on top of it's ills.
The most frustrating part, this labelling actually works. I met one person keen to stay in shape that ate this food believing that it was a healthy alternative snack. The lies work.
The packet which offends me the most is 'Haldirams diet chiwda". For the benefit of non-Indians, Haldirams is one of India's biggest snacks and confectionary brands, and chiwda is a kind of crispy snack. The brand is generally well regarded for quality, but the snack in question is anything but a diet food. In fact, before concerns about gluten, I used this snack to gain weight. The justification for labelling this particular pack as diet is a fractional reduction in calories and fat compared to the non-diet version, but this doesn't match the claims.
From the front of the packet it's bold:
"Diet"
"Snac Lite!"
"Sensible snacking"
"Mild taste" (ok I'll agree with this one)
The imagery follows up the words; the packet is mostly green (the colour of healthy) with thin vertical stripes... even the packet needs a slimming effect. The detail is not subtle, an image of a tape measure wrapped around the pack. The tape measure continues on the back of the pack, with little but a repetition of the same claim "healthy namkeen" (snack). Apparently this is part of a series of healthy snacks.
The problems begin at the nutrition label... it's not actually healthy. It has 516 calories per 100g (774 calories per bag) of which most come from white rice and palm oil. This is about as far as you can get from healthy, bar the non diet version of the same snack, or foods flavoured with lead, arsenic, maybe a little mercury? It gets worse, it's not just the high calorie density from nutritionally poor foods, it's the "mild taste". If you're a bit greedy like me you can easily finish an entire pack in one sitting, that's a meals worth of calories (1/3 of daily intake). This combination makes it, to my mind, one of the most dangerously misleading foods available.
There are many other high calorie density foods available, what catches my attention here is also the low quality of the food. Cashew nuts at 550 calories per 100g are high, but pro rata match your RDA of protein, iron, magnesium, and nearly vitamin B6 and potassium. This product doesn't contain cashews. It's white rice, which as I have covered before, doesn't have much to offer beyond starch. A big chunk of the energy comes from fat, 28% by weight. The fat is palm oil, which is one of the least healthy and most environmentally destructive oils available. The rainforests of Indonesia will be destroyed and replaced by a barren monoculture thanks to this oil. Of the remaining ingredients only the 15% gram flour (chickpea) offers some salvation. Chickpea has a reasonable protein content for a starchy food, and is digested slightly more slowly. The remaining macro ingredients are starch and sugar, as if this product needed added sugar on top of it's ills.
The most frustrating part, this labelling actually works. I met one person keen to stay in shape that ate this food believing that it was a healthy alternative snack. The lies work.
