It is the go-to place for good ingredients such as chia, quinoa and nuts, but the health food aisle is also where junk hides behind labels such as "organic" and "gluten-free", and where "vegan" and "no artificial colours and flavours" can make you think products are cleaner than they really are.
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Breakfast cereal
Alongside genuinely healthy foods such as steel-cut oats, you will often find organic or gluten-free children's cereals with as much sugar as Coco Pops – 30 per cent sugar or more. That is why dietitian Sue Radd from Sydney's Nutrition and Wellbeing Clinic suggests using the health food aisle to source ingredients such as rolled rye, rolled barley, rolled oats, cinnamon, currants and chia to create your own breakfast blends rather than buy manufactured cereals.
"This way you get low-GI carbs, more antioxidants and you avoid acrylamide, a substance formed in foods produced with high-temperature processing methods such as those that produce puffed or extruded cereals," she said. (Food Standards Australia New Zealand recommends reducing exposure to acrylamide, which can cause cancer in animals. Research into its impact on human health is ongoing.)
"I'm appalled at how parents are duped into believing certain breakfast cereals from health food shops and supermarket health sections are healthy when they still add so much sugar to an already high-GI starchy product. If you do buy ready-made breakfast cereal, I'd suggest looking for one with as little added sugar as possible – and not more than 15 grams sugar per 100 grams, and one with at least 3 grams fibre per serve and preferably 6 grams fibre per serve."
Gluten-free products
Although many gluten-free products are low in fibre, healthier higher-fibre options are getting easier to find – just be sure to read the fine print.
"Check the ingredients list first – if it includes 'flour', it usually means the white or refined version of whatever grain is used, but if it lists wholegrains or states 'wholegrain' in front of the type of flour, this suggests it's a better choice," Radd said. "Again, a good benchmark is the amount of fibre per serve.
"If you can't find a high-fibre product, you can increase the fibre in meals by adding other wholefood ingredients from the health food aisle like chia seeds or legumes. Better still, learn how to use naturally gluten-free ingredients like quinoa, teff and buckwheat, and their flours, from scratch rather than rely on packaged products."
Coconut yoghurt
If you are a yoghurt lover looking for a dairy-free alternative, yoghurt made with coconut milk might seem like a good, although pricier, option. But while it might be OK in moderation as part of a healthy vegan diet that's otherwise low in saturated fat, Radd suggests using it occasionally as a special treat instead of cream.
"We don't have good evidence yet that eating saturated fat from coconut at high levels is safe or healthy within the context of a modern Western diet," she said.
Super food supplements
About $25 buys a small pack of powdered "super food" – a mix of ingredients such as acai, goji, wheatgrass, spirulina and spinach combined with not-so-super foods such as dextrose and anti-caking agent – to add to breakfast cereal or smoothies. Time-poor consumers are easy prey for products such as these, Radd said, but there is no evidence that they are as good as eating the wholefoods.
"Studies using soy protein in processed bars, for instance, found that these products lacked all the benefits usually associated with consuming soy foods which naturally contain soy protein – for example, they didn't lower cholesterol as much as expected.
"There are no traditional diets that use these powders, yet plant-based diets like the Mediterranean diet have plenty of scientific evidence that they help protect against chronic diseases. They're cheaper and taste better than mixing and drinking any powders."
Baked chips
With labels spruiking healthy ingredients such as vegetables, lentils, flax seed, soy or brown rice, packaged chips in the health food aisle seem much healthier, but are they? When you read the fine print, you find these ingredients often make up just a small percentage of the product – such as the brand whose "vegetable" content is 12 per cent powdered vegetable, or the brown rice chips listing brown rice as the fourth ingredient after rice flour, white corn masa flour and calcium hydroxide.
"I'm not a fan of most packet snacks because they just promote grazing through the day," Radd said. "Snacks with claims like 'organic' seem virtuous but can still contribute high-GI carbs, fats that promote inflammation and massive amounts of sodium – I've seen kale chips with over 1200 milligrams sodium per 100 grams.
"We usually advise that if you must have processed packaged snacks, keep them under 600 kilojoules per serve as that also helps limit sugar and fat, and choose brands with the least saturated fat and sodium per 100 grams."
SMH
