ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 24, 1996 TAG: 9601240013
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Marketplace
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL
Just when you thought you'd have to give up your New Year's diet because you can't stay away from those candy bars, Mars Inc. has introduced Milky Way Lite.
Is this the perfect way to, as the company's news release says, ``have your chocolate and eat it, too''?
Well, not exactly. The candy bar is just smaller. A 1.57-ounce Milky Way Lite bar has 170 calories and 5 grams of fat. A regular Milky Way bar - 2.15 ounces - has 280 calories and 11 grams of fat.
The new bars contain something called polydextrose, a carbohydrate that has 1 calorie per gram, compared with 4 calories per gram in other carbos and 9 calories per gram in fat. It's basically a non-nutritive bulking agent, says Cameron Hackney, a professor of food science and technology at Virginia Tech.
Or, in non-science-person terms, polydextrose provides texture and bulk but passes right through the digestive tract without being absorbed by the body. It has been fully approved by the FDA and has been used as a fat substitute for 10 or 15 years.
``Fat creates a lot of the texture we like to have,'' Hackney says. If substitutes such as polydextrose are used correctly, it's fairly hard to tell the difference between regular and reduced-fat foods, he says.
An unscientific survey - which involved passing out bite-size Milky Way Lites to co-workers and asking ``Well, what do you think?'' - found that the new candy bars are nearly indistinguishable from the original formula in taste and texture (although they're considerably smaller than traditional Milky Ways).
So maybe the new candy bar's slogan - ``Smooth, lite, everything's right'' - is right on target.
Or maybe not. Ann Hertzler, a professor of human nutrition and foods at Tech, says that calories are calories, no matter if they come from reduced-fat foods. Gorging on reduced-fat snacks may end up doing more harm than we realize, she says.
On the positive side, we seem to be getting the message about fat: According to a 1994 Agriculture Department survey of 5,500 people, Americans got 33 percent of their calories from fat, down from 40 percent in 1977-1978.
But the same survey participants - including children - consumed 6 percent more calories, averaging nearly 2,000 a day. And they were 11 to 12 pounds heavier, even accounting for a 1-inch average height gain in the same period.
Many of those extra calories may have come from snack foods: Survey participants reported eating three times as much popcorn and pretzels - touted as ``healthy'' munchies - as they did 20 years ago.
``The notion is that it's reduced-fat, so therefore you can have it,'' Hertzler says. But reduced fat doesn't always mean reduced calories, she says. Whenever you eat a reduced-fat candy bar, you're still loading up on what many nutritionists consider empty calories.
``You're not really getting a free ride,'' she says. ``If your body has extra calories, it'll convert them into fat.''
Some researchers worry that people will eat so many low-fat snacks that they neglect more-nutritious foods, or that feeding reduced-fat candy bars and similarly ``healthy'' junk foods to kids will send the next generation the wrong message about nutrition.
``There is a place for these snacks,'' Hertzler says. ``But we need to make the rest of nutrition as exciting. Candy bars aren't really a substitute for anything on the food pyramid.''
Hertzler agrees, however, that there is a place for some of these "healthy" junk foods. Baked tortilla chips, for instance, can save you both fat and calories. And so can the light menus at fast-food places such as Taco Bell.
``But the consumer needs to back up and say, `Hey, what am I purchasing?''' she says.
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Chart: How does your favorite candy bar measure up?by CNBcolor.