Food Labels are BS

Product marketing has created a self-sustaining cycle of ignorance. Idiotic labeling and equally stupid advertisements are to blame for the majority of public misconceptions about nutrition.

Low fat! Fat free! Low sodium! No trans fats! 0 mg cholesterol! Whole wheat! Whole grains! Multigrain! Low sugar!

It's all bullshit. Observe one grievous offender, Cheerios:

Read the red text in the corner. Not only are there blatant lies, THERE IS ONLY ONE GRAM OF FIBER PER CUP, AND THAT IS THE BASIS OF THE WHOLE "HEART HEALTHY" BOX DESIGN! WHAT THE HELL!?

All this labeling is usually a load of crap, and it is the metric by which most people judge the "healthiness" of food. There are so many things wrong with food labeling that I'm just going to give you the short bulleted version.

What's wrong with labeling and "nutrition facts":

• "Low fat" usually means "high carb" outside the context of meat. Guess which one is worse for you?

• Saturated fat is not bad for you, so telling you how much saturated fat is in something on the front label is pointless. In fact, saturated fat is better for you than chemically-derived plant oils, like vegetable oil and canola oil, and any kind of oil that is used in frying (the high heat in deep frying oxidizes fats, especially the less-stable nonsaturated ones; oxidized fat is bad news.)

• "Percent" fat-free is a silly claim. Most of the time, fat content is prioritized over caloric content, which is ass-backwards. Likewise, the distinction of "calories from fat" is stupid and should be scrapped.

• "Low sugar" is a mostly useless claim, because carbs are still carbs. Whether they are in the form of sugar or not is a mostly-arbitrary distinction. Sugar usually produces a larger insulin response by itself (one major exception is that of vegetable starches, e.g., potatoes, which are technically complex carbs: they happen to have a higher glycemic index than pure sugar). However, in the common presence of fat and protein, all carbohydrates digest much more slowly and therefore have a lower GI than if they were by themselves. For these reasons, a low sugar food can easily have a lower GI than a high-sugar food. Since the impact of sugar is completely context dependent, its presence or lack thereof is nearly irrelevant. What would be superior to listing the amount of sugar in a food is showing the glycemic index (or glycemic load per serving) on the front of the package. This would already be of great benefit to diabetics (who must be cautious of high blood sugar), but it would also make people realize that many "healthy" low sugar foods are really not that good for you. (Note: GI is mostly irrelevant in the short term as far as weight loss/gain goes [as calories are the #1 factor in this time frame], but in the long term it has serious implications regarding metabolic health.)

• "Whole grain" MEANS ALMOST NOTHING IN TERMS OF HEALTHFULNESS. So what if it's composed of all parts of the grain? It's still full of mostly empty calories! Did you know that whole wheat bread produces an insulin response virtually identical to that of white bread, which is greater than the insulin response of soda? In fact, most grain products are more or less the same in terms of GI and lack of substantial nutritional value. This is why the food pyramid is retarded.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. IT'S SO STUPID IT'S FUNNY.

• "Grams of whole grain" is about as relevant as saying "grams of bacon." "X grams of whole grain per serving!" doesn't mean anything significant. The amounts of nutrients contained within food are what's important, not the amount of the food itself.

It's better for you, too! (seriously)

• "Multigrain" is a virtually superfluous claim. The presence of different types of grains doesn't make it meaningfully better for you. An accurate analogy would be a Suicide from a soda fountain-- mixing different sodas together doesn't make it healthier. In fairness, though, like sodas, different grains have different GIs, so mixing them will do you slightly better than just one that has a higher-than-average GI. Similarly, some grains have a modestly higher fiber and micronutrient content. In the end, the benefit of multigrain is so infinitesimally small as to be negligible.

Please excuse me as I hit Caps Lock and pound furiously on my keyboard: SEB;KVOBJAS;OVDBFDVJIBDSP[HOIFANOIOHISJOIA;GOIBNASD.

You're kidding me, right? Right!?

• Minimally processed (or refined) grains are better for you than highly processed ones. Unlike the "whole grain" distinction, it actually makes a difference, yet "whole grain"is still the go-to for making you feel less guilty about eating insulinogenic carbs. Less-refined grains, like oats in standard oatmeal, are better for you in that form compared to cereals made from oat flour Cough ...Cheerios.. Cough. Again, this has to do with insulin response: although the benefit of a lower-GI food is miniscule on a day-to-day basis, in the long run it can make a huge difference in terms of metabolic health.

• Dietary cholesterol has a miniscule effect on your serum (blood) cholesterol. Therefore, cholesterol content of food doesn't matter. In fact, carb intake can have a huge impact on your cholesterol, so, ironically, you're much better off having wholesome eggs for breakfast than cholesterol-free refined grain cereal.

• Protein content is almost never featured on the front of the package, even though protein is the best macronutrient!

Protein and Star Wars, with no ridiculous claims? Things really were better in the days before retarded dietary recommendations.

• Caloric content is rarely displayed on the front of packages, but instead a bunch of irrelevant previously-mentioned catchphrases are. The amount of overall Calories is more important than that of individual nutrients.

• Serving sizes are completely arbitrary and are not standardized whatsoever. Nutritional claims are always relative to those arbitrary servings. Sometimes, this is exploited and the stupidity reaches ridiculous levels:

1 g serving size: ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME!? GAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! HULK SMASH!

• Sodium isn't necessarily bad for you. It doesn't cause cardiovascular problems. What's important is your body's electrolyte balance. Eating a lot of sodium doesn't matter unless you eat much more sodium than other electrolytes like potassium. Otherwise, your kidneys will do their job just fine as long as you drink enough water.

• Micronutrients are almost never listed if they're not vitamins or minerals. There are so many salubrious compounds in fruits and vegetables and other foods (phytonutrients, naturally-occurring omega-3 fatty acids, etc.), but there's no way for you to know that they're there. Thankfully, there are some resources that explain why fruits and vegetables are so good for you, and why you should eat them even if you take a multivitamin. The tendency to eat more fruits and vegetables probably one of the few redeeming qualities of vegetarianism.

• On the flipside, it's refreshing to see that fruits and vegetables don't have labeling all over them because they're not manufactured by a corporation. Thankfully, you'll ever see apples with FAT FREE LOW SUGAR ZERO CHOLESTEROL LOW SODIUM HIGH FIBER NO PRESERVATIVES LOW CALORIE stickers all over them.

• If a food is "a good source" of an added vitamin or mineral, you're probably better off taking those nutrients in the form of a multivitamin.

• Sometimes, the claim of no trans-fat is a lie. The FDA allows everything to be rounded off, so something with 0.49 grams of trans fat per arbitrarily sized serving can still claim to have no trans fat, so don't trust the claims. Look at the ingredients list-- hydrogenated oils are trans fats, and you should stay the hell away from anything containing it. 

Peanut butter is one of the worst offenders. Buy the "natural" stuff instead. Usually, you can't even tell the difference if palm oil (mostly saturated fat, no less) replaces the evil stuff.

• Most of the FDA's Recommended Daily Intake as far as calories and macronutrients (carbs, protein, fat, and their constituents) are concerned are COMPLETELY ARBITRARY WITHOUT ANY LEGITIMATE SCIENTIFIC BASIS WHATSOEVER! Don't take RDI (or its counterpart, % DV) seriously for protein, fats, and carbs and their subcomponents like types of fat and sugar.

• Even recommended vitamin and mineral intake is fairly arbitrary, but it at least it is backed by legitimate scientific studies. Recommended amounts are purely ballpark estimates for the "average" person. In many cases it is beneficial to intake several times the recommended daily amount of a nutrient, like vitamin D.

• The "standard" 2000 calorie diet is an arbitrary metric as well. It is not a one-size-fits-all recommended intake. There are way too many individual factors to set any number of calories as the status quo.

• Keep in mind: the same people that give crappy dietary recommendations also like to use BMI on an individual basis-- i.e., they have no idea what they are talking about. DON'T TAKE ANY STOCK IN WHAT THE FDA OR USDA SAYS AS FAR AS WEIGHT CONTROL GOES! 

• Sugar alcohols are BS. Net carbs are more important than total carb count; that is, fiber has negligible caloric value and so should not count as "true" carbs even though they are still technically carbohydrates. However, sugar alcohols do count about halfway. The truth of it is that they have a  less than 4 Calories per gram, but for some reason, there are a bunch of protein and diet bar manufacturers who put a bunch of sugar alcohols in their products and don't include them in the count towards net carbs. This is essentially lying but it's still legal for them to do so! At best, it's a nuisance, and at worst it can sabotage a ketogenic diet.

I may tack some more points on here if they come to mind later on, but I think this is good enough for now. Hopefully this has been one of my better didactic posts. Now you are no longer a sheep who takes food labeling at face value, and that can be hugely beneficial. Be smarter than the people who design the labeling.