Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 3, 1991 TAG: 9104030269
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARIAN BURROS/ THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Is a hot dog labeled 80 percent fat free a sound nutritional choice? What does it mean when the label says, "This product contains no more than 20 percent fat, which is 33 percent less fat than the U.S.D.A. standard"?
And what is one to make of a pizza package that says "50 percent less fat than our regular vegetable pizza"?
Especially if you haven't a clue as to the fat content of the company's regular vegetable pizza. The implication of such labeling is that these products are sound nutritional choices because they are low in fat.
The use of percentages as a selling tool on food packages usually obscures what shoppers really need to know: the actual amount of fat.
Most percentages are meaningless when you are trying to figure out whether a particular food fits into your nutritional plan.
So you ask one of your "math brain" friends to explain why most percentages are meaningless. "Because they are based on weight," says the friend. If you are like me, you nod your head knowingly, and when no one is looking you scratch it.
Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington that focuses on health matters, has figured out a simple way to make the percentage by weight meaningful for the mathematically illiterate. (Math majors may skip the next two paragraphs.)
"Two pats of butter are 100 percent fat," Liebman said patiently. "If you put the two pats into a glass of water you get a beverage that is 96 percent fat free. It doesn't matter to your body whether you eat the pats of butter with or without the water."
In other words, you are still getting the same amount of fat.
"The reason these percentage claims are so deceptive," Liebman said, "is that much of the weight of these products is water."
For example, bologna is 54 percent water, pasta cooked tender is 72 percent water and pasta cooked firm is 64 percent water. Many fruits and vegetables are 90 percent water. Fruits, vegetables or pasta rarely come with percentage-of-fat labels. But dozens of other foods do.
For example, Louis Rich Turkey Bologna is labeled 82 percent fat free. Swift Premium Lite Brown 'N Serve Sausage says it is 76 percent fat free.
You might also think that frozen dinners like Conagra's Kid Cuisine Hot Dogs with Buns and its Kid Cuisine Fried Chicken fit right in with low-fat eating since the package says they are each 88 percent fat free.
But look at it this way: Premium ice creams, like Haagen-Dazs and Frusen Gladje, are universally acknowledged to be high-fat foods, foods for an occasional indulgence.
Yet, if premium ice cream makers were so inclined they, too, could advertise their products as being 80 or 82 percent fat free since they contain about 18 to 20 percent butterfat by weight.
But whatever the percent of fat by weight, nutritionists say that whatever an individual eats, no more than 30 percent of the calories should come from fat. Since there are 9 calories in a gram of fat, that means you are entitled to 50 grams of fat if you eat 1,500 calories a day.
But you can avoid all this arithmetic. Just figure out the number of calories you want to take in and, using the chart accompanying this column as a guide, add up the grams of fat you are consuming.
This simple approach will be more and more helpful in light of the trend toward expressing the fat content of food as a percentage of weight. Percentage labeling may be to the '90s what "lite" was to the '80s, and just as unenlightening.
Stouffer's Lean Cuisine has been so anxious to add the percentage labeling to its products that it has attached a sticker that says: "Now! At least 95 percent fat free. No more than 5 percent fat."
Packages with nutrition labels offer the shopper a fighting chance to see just what these percentages mean. For example, the Kid Cuisine Fried Chicken frozen meal contains 28 grams of fat in a serving. That would be almost half the fat a 4- to 6-year-old child should eat in one day, according to the 30-percent formula.
Lean Cuisine's 95 percent fat-free products are relatively low in fat, at 5 to 7 grams a serving. Still, they do not qualify for the Food and Drug Administration's definition of low fat: no more than 2 grams of fat a serving.
By that definition, the only figure that assures you of a low-fat product is 99 percent fat free. "Ninety-eight percent doesn't cut it," said Bruce Silverglade, director of legal affairs for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "Look at milk."
Two percent milk, which contains 2 percent butterfat - or 98 percent fat free, if you will - may be called low-fat milk, but it contains five grams of fat in an eight-ounce serving.
Actually, even milk with 1 percent butterfat is a little over the line, with 2.5 grams of fat in a serving, and whole milk, of course, which is 4 percent butterfat, has about 10 grams of fat a serving.
Silverglade said his organization is so disturbed about this "newest ploy" that it plans to ask the FDA to call for a moratorium on such claims until the agency implements the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990.
The act, which makes nutrition labeling mandatory, prohibits percentage labeling that is misleading and requires that it be consistent with the low-fat definition.
But even when those regulations take effect in 1993 they will have no impact on meat and poultry products. Meat and poultry are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and are not included in the law.
The USDA has announced plans for some form of mandatory nutrition labeling. But Margaret Glavin, deputy administrator of regulatory programs in the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said the department has no problem with percentage labeling.
"We would like to permit comparative claims," Glavin said. "What's on the front has to catch your eye and get you interested in the product. But anything on the front has to refer to the back to the nutrition panel."
Consumers can do themselves a favor and look past all percentage claims on the front - with the exception of "99 percent fat free" - and head directly to the back, side or bottom panel to determine if the grams of fat in a serving fit into their overall diet.
by CNB