“I would never suggest that someone who doesn’t like apples should eat apples because it will help you lose weight,” Lander-Canseco says. “Fruits are high in fiber, vitamins and minerals, so the benefits you get from them outweigh the glucose impact that you would get from say, bread, white flours or other carbohydrates.”īut remember, no one fruit or diet decision alone can make you lose weight. “For some reason, people think that because fruits are sweet that they’re off-limits,” she says. “Don’t be afraid of the sugar in fruit - welcome it,” Lander-Canseco says. Since fruit is high in water and fiber, but low in calories, eating them can help increase fullness, while reducing hunger and calorie intake. High-fiber diets that include many fruits may also help with weight management. “No matter the variety of foods you eat, healthy diets should try to incorporate five servings of fruit and vegetables each day, because studies have shown that this can improve overall health and lower the risk of serious health problems, such as obesity or type 2 diabetes,” says Rachel Lander-Canseco, RD, a registered dietitian at Keck Medicine of USC. The exact makeup of a healthy diet for you depends on a diversity of factors such as your age, gender, lifestyle, culture and dietary customs, as well as what food is available and affordable in your location. That’s why PepsiCo’s effort is worth applauding, and why we need more companies to follow their example.Weighing your options: Are you making the best selections in the produce section? The new drugs can quickly attack the crisis in today’s population with the highest rates of obesity – and if they prove to be safe, that will be a good thing - but we also need longer-term solutions that will prevent future generations from dealing with obesity. Will Stealth Health get an immediate payback? It will not, but we didn’t get to the epidemic of widespread obesity overnight. While Stealth Health is the right thing to do, resist the urge to score public relations brownie points from it. Marketing of reduced sizes or reformulated foods should play up their most appealing qualities, such as crunchiness or refreshing taste. Don’t call anything “healthy.” Laguarta, the PepsiCo CEO, admitted that the company’s “healthy” products are a niche brand, appealing only to the health conscious and not to the majority of its customers.Reducing restaurant meals by 10 percent at a time will also help lower calories and get patrons accustomed to smaller portions. The confectionary industry’s “ Always a Treat” initiative has resulted in 50% of their individually wrapped products delivering 200 calories or less. While consumers have bristled at companies reducing package sizes while charging the same or more for them during the pandemic, a gradual reduction in the sizes companies offer will be beneficial to consumer health. Consumers demand taste, convenience and “permissible indulgence” and have demonstrated a broad rejection of products that don’t deliver on these attributes. Give consumers what they want without telling them it’s healthier.Food companies must be front and center on this. They may provide a short-term benefit but will not change American’s need to eat healthier and adopt healthier lifestyles. Don’t shift the dialogue to obesity reduction drugs as a panacea. We need more companies – and especially more restaurants – to emulate what PepsiCo is doing and begin their own Stealth Health initiatives. By gradually (and invisibly) reducing salt, sugar and fat, food companies can keep them as customers while steadily getting their palates accustomed to better-for-you foods and snacks. The biggest opportunities are with the 13% percent of people that NMI calls the “Eat, Drink and Be Merries,” who just want to live life to the fullest without fretting over what they eat and the 24 percent of the population who are “Fence Sitters,” who want to eat healthy but can’t find the time to plan healthy meals. Reformulating indulgent products to meet the trend to “permissible indulgence” will appeal to a broader swath of the population.
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