Yes, natural.thought, to educate people to make the right choices is what’s really important. But who controls the media and decides what is the truth about the health of products? You are no doubt aware of the recent backflip regarding animal fats causing heart disease - it turns out not to be so, after years of public education telling us it was so.
As miss_universe93 said, “hate to say it but every variety of Vaalia has sugar. in fact every yogurt has sugar. if they reduce the sugar it unfortunately means more fat (like Jalna plain greek yoghurt - as much fat as a cheeseburger) so it’s usually far from a health food. there’s also a lot of conflicting information and opinions as to what is “heathly” and what is not.”
May I say that the fat in a cheeseburger is far less healthy than the fat in a wholefood like pasture-fed or organic full fat plain yoghurt or dairy product. Trans fats are often hidden on food labels and you can’t compare apples with oranges when measuring total fat content.
The other thing is this : You might eat a whole cheeseburger in a sitting but you won’t eat a whole tub of plain yoghurt, will you?
The shortcut to healthy eating is to avoid processed food (and most supermarkets). Only retired people and the really dedicated can find the time to source Farmer’s markets and make meals from scratch. But if you are time-poor, as are most parents of school-aged children these days, it’s just an enormous pressure and guilt-ridden exercise to buy and prepare real, healthy food for a family. The big supermarkets know this pain is your reality, and they are simply cashing in.
Maybe there should be this new regulation for supermarkets: any processed food with added sugar in it should be in the aisle(s) called “Confection”. In the dairy section, put all the dips & yoghurt in their own “Dairy Confection” rows. At least people buying these products will learn the truth about the added sugar in these products. Best of all, those trying to avoid sugar can go straight to the non-sugar section, without having to pull out a magnifying glass to decipher every label.
We seem to totally agree with each other, except for one point:
I have the time to commit to a healthy lifestyle. I’m not entirely sure if this is because I have a lot of free time (it certainly doesn’t feel like it), or because I value my health and hold it as a priority in my life. It helps that I don’t have a family to support, but my mother managed to cook healthy food for six children just fine. Every circumstance is unique, so we cannot generalise the situation. I simply make the point that health will always be something I value. (Pro-tip, if you’re in a time-crunch, simply buy fresh produce from the supermarket. Although there are great benefits to shopping at a farmers market, It is better to eat healthy from big business than to not eat healthy at all.)
Also, I’d like to point out that if people realised (were educated on) how simple cooking your own meals can be, more people would do it. It can often feel like an ominous task - and I do face days where I don’t feel like making something - but I never regret it once I find the time to commit to a healthy meal. It doesn’t have to be as hard as people make it out to be.
Maybe we are facing a “food shaming” crisis where people feel they can’t compete with the cooking shows, much like body shaming has brought on unrealistic expectations for body shape.
We get our healthy food from the local greengrocer. It’s usually better quality than the stale vegies on offer at the so called fresh food people. While the junk food can be cheaper to purchase, we choose not to. Just because a packet of tim tams is on special, doesn’t mean you have to purchase it, and we don’t. We make our own choices.
@petpad.byers, Hi, I know that you’re talking about major brands rather than store brands and I agree with you totally about the major brands; but if you look solely at the store branded foods, there are some already that meet the standards which you refer to. Providing a person knows what to look for, it’s possible to buy healthy foods at quite reasonable prices. Black & Gold store-branded goods, for example, provide access to processed foods like plain rolled oats, wholemeal breads, cream cheese, margarine or butter etc at very reasonable prices. However, if wanting to buy Australian products then it is necessary to read the labelling carefully. I don’t know whether the “Select” brand in Woolworths is as good as Black & Gold because the quality of the Select foods is a bit hit or miss.
Sorry for the late reply, natural thought.
I think it is a pertinent point that you don’t have a problem committing to a healthy lifestyle, perhaps because “It helps that I don’t have a family to support, but my mother managed to cook healthy food for six children just fine.”
Not having a family to support means you can commit because you’re unencumbered by others’ desires or preferences.
your mother “managed to cook healthy food for six children just fine.” Can I ask: Did your mother work full-time outside the home?
I don’t know how old you are, but in my day food was automatically healthier because there weren’t so many additives in food or chemicals in the air/water/food. My parents both worked full time with nine children - most dinners were meat and three veg, with fresh fruit for desert. We grew a lot of it ourselves, including the meat, and milked our own cow each day. The food was pretty unimaginative (I don’t blame anyone for that) but I didn’t know what a bulb of garlic looked like until I went to the city for Uni. But even back then ('60’s/'70’s), my mother didn’t have time to make fancy meals or desserts. It’s a miracle we were properly fed at all - my parents were magicians! (teachers, actually).
My point is this: Most people are too time-poor to produce healthy meals consistently and the main reason is there is not a person in the household who can fully commit to making it happen, as they are too busy working outside the home. And sometimes they just need a holiday, when no-one else at home steps up and takes responsibility.
Some who have contributed to this thread may be interested in this program on SBS tonight, which has relevance to what food manufacturers are doing here in Australia:
Global Junk Food
Thursday 3rd August at 8:35 pm (65 minutes)
In Europe, food manufacturers have signed up to ‘responsibility pledges’, promising no added sugar, preservatives, artificial colours or flavours and not to target children. So why are they using tactics banned in the West in the developing world? There, they have created ultra-low cost products with higher levels of salt, sugar and saturated fats. Filmed in Brazil, India and France, this program investigates the new tactics of global food brands and their role in the worldwide obesity crisis.
G
Premiere, Documentary
They use shelf space as the measure. There are reports that if a product doesn’t sell, it is booted off the shelves. If a considerable proportion of shelves are made up with ‘unhealthy’ foods, it means someone (a lot of someones) is buying it, otherwise it would not be stocked . Maybe the shelves represent demand for products by consumers and what consumers chose to eat…which is worrying/depressing/concerning. The supermarkets are only satisfying this demand by stocking those products which sell.
Or maybe the junk food represents the highest profit lines. It has been shown product placement affects sales. Putting the most profitable products in the ‘best’ places is ‘good business’ but might be bad nutrition. Although nutrition is not the responsibility of the grocers they are still not innocent in pushing profits above it.
The supermarkets are in the business of maximasing profits. Unprofitable or less profitable products get the flick.
The products stocked at eye height in the aisles, and the end of aisles product displays, pay the hefty premium for positioning which healthy products probably cannot afford.
This may be true for ‘promotional stands’ at the end of aisles, but within the aisle the same products of differing brands are shelved vertically. In such case there would be no difference…and vertical position is often based on producer payments rather than health or marginal profit. Quite often the cheaper products are at the bottom…which could have less nutritional value.
Water crackers, the lower cost Woolies brand on last visit was mid shelf and adjacent to Carr’s and Arnotts.
Tinned Tuna, Safcol which is not the lowest cost was on the bottom shelf, with a lower cost brand and premium priced John West above.
Plain rolled oats, on the upper shelves, brand name or Woolies brand. Hidden amongst numerous other pretend options for making porridge faster or tastier. These also occupied the mid shelves with a variety of unfamiliar expensive muesli mixes below.
In the fruit and veg and meat sections where healthier options are found, it seems all so less obvious. Just note most prepackaged items are always dearer. Bulk potatoes and onions excepted.
In the 3-4 rows of soft drinks, snack foods and sweets does placement matter? Just look for the specials of what you like when you feel the urge.
The Local IGA shelf stacker suggested they simply jam things in where ever they can find a spot. It’s too small to be too particular.
That applies to our Colesworths also. Sometimes it defies imagination where they locate some products as they will be aisles away from the rest of similar lines and intermingled with very dissimilar products. It is as if the management wants them to fail through making them obscure and hard to locate.
Every few quarters there is also a whole-of-store rearrangement to presumably get stock back on the plan. Bottom line is almost everything goes ‘somewhere else’ from where we got used to finding it. The smaller sections like packaged organic and health foods tend to be most exciting to find since they are easiest to relocate.
When I walked throught the house yesterday afternoon, there was an ad on the TV my wife was watching which extolled the benefits of Kellog’s Nutri Grain cereal.
Whilst the pack is marked as having a 4 star health rating, this slideshow lists in as being the second worst of some 20 breakfast cereals beating only Kellog’s Corn Flakes.
