"Only 9 grams of fat"

What a useless statement.   What matters is the ratio of the nutrients, not the absolute quantities, because the serving size can always be adjusted.   I frequently see product packaging bragging about low fat content or low caloric content even though fat and refined sugar constitute 100% of the nutritional content of the product.  The fact that something contains little or no nutriment does NOT make it healthy, contrary to the ideas that all this marketing seems to promote.   The marketers can dilute the product with air or water and downsize the labeled serving size to whatever they want to meet whatever caloric claim they want to make.


You should get about 50% of your calories from carbs, 30% from protein, and 20% from fat.   Since fat has 9 calories per gram and protein has 4, that implies that you should get about 3.5 grams of protein for every gram of fat you consume.    The difficult thing about that is to get enough protein without getting too much fat.


Baked chicken breasts only contain about 2.5 grams of protein per gram of fat.  Almost all beef contains more fat than protein.

However, grain, soy, skim milk, and tuna can compensate for that.  All four have protein:fat ratios in excess of 10:1.   Also, salmon is good at around 5:1.   Salmon contains some useful kinds of fats that are not found in significant quantities in land-based meat (such as ALA).   ALA is used in the brain as a component of myelin.


So I would like to see products advertising their protein:fat:carbohydrate ratio and their nutrient content instead of useless statements like "only 100 calories" that are solely determined by the marketer's arbitrarily small choice of a serving size.

Farhad2000 says...

That sort of labeling has less to do with conveying information and more to do with selling the product as being 'low fat'.

Its fairly common for consumers to claim 9 grams of fat! on the label while considering a single cookie serving, when in reality the average cookie consumption exceeds a single cookie.

Consumers get fooled into believing that the whole package is 9 grams of fat, when in reality its one cookie that contains 9 grams of fat. The distinction is not made because its the consumers responsibility not the producers, regardless how false the claim is in reality with regards to marketing and branding.

jwray says...

Unfortunately a lot of foods marketed as "low calorie" or "low fat" have no nutritional value and cause people's muscles to atrophy, slowing their metabolism, making them fatter. Nutrient-sparse high-glycemic-index carbs are the worst thing to eat if you are trying to lose weight, yet lots of them are marketed that way. I recommend milk and boca burgers. My weight has stayed at 138±5 lbs from age 17 to age 23.

People can become deficient in fat. Getting some kinds of fat from food is absolutely essential.

firefly says...

The manufacturer's idea of what constitutes a "serving size" is laughable. On my pint of Ben & Jerrys Peanut Butter Cup ice cream (OK, not healthy, so sue me! ) Serving per container: 4! FOUR? Four what, four kids? A serving size is half a cup, which is about a mouthful for me; 1 pint = 1 serving! mmmmmmm Ben & Jerrys...
Hooray for overweight 'mericans!

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