Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

don't take my snickers away

Despite supposed demand for healthier alternatives in office snack food vending machines, the biggest sellers continue to be the sugar- and salt-heavy selections, while the trail mix and peanuts languish, unpopular and uneaten, reports the Boston Globe. (“Feeding Their Addictions” - 02/17/05)

But while low-carb, low-fat, and high-fiber fads come and go, she said, granola bars, trail mix, and other items perceived as “healthier” choices continue to collect dust in office vending machines.

“People would come to [employers] and would say we want to see healthy things in the machine,” she said. “Out of 200 people, it may have been three who actually ate the stuff.”

Despite the carb concerns, Snickers, M&M Peanuts, and Doritos Nacho Cheesier are the top three sellers in snack vending machines nationwide, according to Pittsburgh-based Management Science Associates Inc., which tracks sales. Fruit bars, nuts, and trail mix aren’t even in the top 10.

Speaking of diet foods, the New Evil, trans fats, are yet another distraction (in the same vein as carbs and fat) from teaching Americans how to maintain a healthy diet, writes Katharine Mieszkowski at Salon.com (“Now serving no trans fat!” - 03/07/05) The keys to staying healthy and fit are exercising regularly and following the dictum “in all things, moderation,” rather than allowing the latest diet warnings to give us an excuse to swing to extremes in our eating habits. (For example, as Mieszkowski writes, that pepperoni pizza she ordered from a Tiburon, Calif., restaurant may be trans fat-free … But does that mean it’s necessarily any healthier for her?)

But nutritionists fear that focusing on one ingredient creates the illusion that purging it will make up for our other crimes against the waistline. Health advocates say the war on trans fat has become little more than a marketing opportunity for the major food companies to continue serving junk food with a healthy conscience. Meanwhile, with its new guidelines about avoiding trans fat, the USDA can appear to be doing the healthy thing without really causing the food companies to change their fatty ways…

That’s one reason nutritionists and public-health advocates think that focusing too much on the worst fat in the American diet clouds the larger issue: getting people to eat less junk and more nutritious foods like vegetables and fruits. Simply removing trans fat from food products hardly makes them healthy. In many cases, they are still loaded with sugar, preservatives and calories. Just because Fritos or Doritos chips don’t have trans fat doesn’t mean a dietician will recommend shoveling them down with abandon…

One key issue is: What will replace trans fat? To keep the texture, taste and mouth-feel that consumers are used to in their cookies and snacks, some companies may just take out the trans fat and pack on the saturated fat.

(Vending machine story found via Al’s Morning Meeting.)