Consumption light foods and you’re convinced that eating healthy and staying fit. But is it really so? What’s behind this magic word, present in hundreds of labels on supermarket shelves?
We asked a nutritionist to explain to us what the term light means and how much they affect during a weight loss diet.
By the term “light” in the food sector, we mean those foods that have been designed and manufactured to reduce caloric intake or to “lighten” them of those nutritional components considered more harmful in terms of health such as fats or simple sugars.
According to study, it should refer to light foods when a food has lost at least 30% of its calorie intake if it takes into account its classic starting counterpart .
For the lower quantity of sugars or fats the specific terms of “low fat” or “no fat content” are used, also defined by law.
0% fat and calories? Sometimes it’s just marketing!
You may have read the label “0% fat”, but this wording should not be used unless there is absolute certainty of the absence of fat. The European provision defines a “fat-free” product if its content is less than 0.5%.
Things change with regards to calories. There are, in fact, some products that carry the word “zero” because they do not provide calories.
Light foods: Is it right to eat them on a diet?
Light foods can be included in the diet as long as you don’t fall into the mistake of believing that just taking them causes you to lose weight.
Furthermore, it must be considered that fats are useful for health, for example to promote the absorption of certain vitamins such as A, D, E and K.
Light foods can help in some particular cases where it is necessary to drastically abolish some nutrients because they are particularly dangerous. For example:
Simple sugar in diabetics
Cholesterol in heart or heart disease and hypercholesterolaemia
The sodium in hypertensives
Excess alcohol in liver sufferers.
Light foods: Learn to read labels
Light foods lack some nutrients accused of harming health, especially fats and sugars. And this would logically run if it were not that it is not true that fats and sugars in the broad sense are bad for health. It is true only if you go too far!
Assuming that a person needs to eliminate fat and sugar because he tends to consume excess, it is essential to make sure that the nutrient that to replace with the offending one is no more harmful than the first!
Many times, in the labels of the cookies or other food industry products labeled “light”, we find instead of sugar on cyclamate and saccharin. Two not very healthy sweeteners!
If instead of the notorious cholesterol, you find vegetable fatty acids (coconut oil, palm oil, trans or hydrogenated fatty acids), you are statistically more at risk of having cardiovascular or tumor problems than you would have with cholesterol.
Light food: Do they lose weight?
According to nutritionist, light foods in a generic sense are the classic example of bad food education. In fact, the consumer is typically looking for a fast way to lose weight and to do this he is willing to believe many things that are told to him, even at the cost of not thinking and spending more.
It is fundamentally wrong to resort to “rigged” food (in the positive sense, that is, with less fat or less sugar than the original) if you are led to eat more of that food. Or if during the rest of the day, you eat without measure, calm because you have eaten a light food that does not make you fat.
Light foods: The pros and cons
Light foods can only be a support to the weight loss diet, as they can “cut” some calories on some specific food.
But they have no function detached from a correct dietary education regime.
Becoming too orthodox in food choices and limitations can lead to a harmful reduction in nutrient supply.
