Diet Coke Nutrition Facts Am I Twice As Healthy Today, Because I Have Had Two Diet Cokes.
This quote is nothing short of shocking, particularly when you consider that it came from a 7 year old. I found it in 'Consumer Kids' by Ed Mayo and Agnes Nairn, which is a great book for opening your eyes to the variety of methods that can be employed to start creating loyal consumers from as early an age as possible. This article is inspired by their chapter dedicated to food, particularly the phenomenon of "nutrition transition".
What would you say the largest global chronic health problem is? Many people think HIV would top the list, but in fact the World Health Organisation tells us it is actually obesity - there are 800 million people starving and 1 billion people overweight. It used to be the case that being 'malnourished' conjured up images of people starving and not getting sufficient nutrients because they did not have sufficient food. Nowadays things have taken a crazy turn - people are eating more than they need and yet are still not properly nourished. How can this be?
In another article we looked at how real food - the stuff that Nature provides for us - is full of nutrients but tends to spoil fairly quickly. This doesn't bode well for companies looking to give their products a long shelf life so elements of the original food are tinkered with so decay is delayed. Putting off the decay of food doesn't sound devious, does it? The catch is that many of the nutrients originally in the food are sacrificed in order to prolong shelf life, and we haven't even started on 'treats' yet. Your body deals in nutrients and so doesn't care if you eat a large amount of food because if that food didn't contain sufficient nutrients you'll be getting signals to eat more in the not too distant future. That's how you can end up eating a larger amount than you really need yet still be malnourished. That's the sad irony of the "nutrition transition".
As an adult there shouldn't be much confusion between 'less bad for you' and 'good for you'. While it seems to be only a good thing that many snack and sweet producers have reduced the amount of ingredients widely acknowledged as bad for you - saturated fats, artificial flavours, etc, the use of 'natural flavours' and incorporation of a small percentage of healthier ingredients like fruit juice or polyunsaturated oils doesn't suddenly transform these packaged goods in to healthy nutritious foods. Adding a drop of extra virgin olive oil doesn't make a chocolate cake a health food.
The other element we must bear in mind is that there are companies out there who view us, children in particular, as little more than 'sugar consumers'. It's not your health they care about, but if you believe they do then you may buy their product and look after their true priority - profit. Therefore the effort goes in to marketing their products to appear healthier than before and something that can be indulged in with minimal side effects. The whole point is to change your view of these products from "junk food" to be avoided to "permissible treats".
Sugar is one of the known 'nutritional villains' but replacing it with artificial sweeteners doesn't fix the problem, and can actually make matters worse. It's bad enough that the seven year old in question thinks that drinking the 'diet' version of a soft drink is improving his health, but the addition of sweeteners can sometimes be even worse for you than sugar. Aspartame (Nutrasweet) is a highly controversial sweetener that may actually be a neurotoxin responsible for a whole list of negative effects, but that's a topic for another time.
The main message to leave you with is that a healthy diet is one that is based on real foods that have not been processed or otherwise denatured. Remember that those selling these products may not have your best interests at heart.
Although it refers to another topic entirely, this Malcolm X quote encapsulates what I've been trying to convey about the recent "improvements" to junk food and the blurred line between 'less bad' and 'healthy' - "You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress ..."
Diet Coke Nutrition Facts.