Seeing is believing... right?

Advertising is everywhere - it's on the tv, in the movies, on billboards and plastered everywhere in between. Shoot, some people even want to turn the moon into one giant floating logo. The point is the food we buy, or rather the bags and boxes that they come in, are no exception.

Most of these buzzwords - low fat, lite, reduced fat, ad infinitum - are healthcentric, trying to convince concerned mothers and would-be dieters that this product is better than all the rest. There's nothing wrong with slapping these words in big bold letters across the front of a box, but if they're going to do us any good, shouldn't we take a minute to learn what they mean?

Take "low fat" and "reduced fat", for example. They seem to imply the same thing - there's not as much fat in whatever it is that you're looking at. Indeed both are concerned with the amount of fat in the product, but they mean rather drastically different things. "Low Fat" denotes that something is, in fact, relatively low in fat. This means 3 grams or less of fat per serving as well as having 30% or less of said calories coming from fat. "Reduced Fat" means that this product has at least 25% less fat per serving than the standard version.
"Light" or "lite" means that the item in question either contains 1/3 fewer calories, or half the fat. These can also be reference to sodium content in which case the amount of sodium must be reduced by at least 50%.

But I'm here to tell you, these things aren't quite as user-friendly as they may seem. The biggest reason for this is that it's all regulated by serving size, but serving sizes aren't regulated. I've got two examples for you.
Firstly, take any one of the multitude of "fat free cooking sprays" available. I have such a can myself (great for the waffle iron and making those cheesecakes come out of the pan) in fact, and a quick look tells me that the primary ingredient (the ingredients are always listed in order of amount, by the way) is canola oil. So it would seem that held in that can is some special form of fat free fat. Sound fishy yet? It's all in the wordplay.

Like I said, the serving size is what matters. If something contains less than 1/2 a gram of fat (a trivial amount in terms of actual consumption) per serving then it can be labeled as "fat free". The serving size for one of those spray bottles, you ask? Oh, a nice healthy 1/3 second burst. In other words, maybe enough to give light covereage to the bottom of a small ramekin (forget about trying to hit the sides, though). If you're trying to go to town on a standard 9x13" baking pan, you're going to be looking at some serious spraytime.

Second example (this one comes from an old professor of mine). One day in the grocery store she spotted a display of cheesecakes. Some were your standard run-of-the-mill, fat, calorie, and deliciousness filled cheesecakes. Others were branded as "reduced fat". Being the savvy shopper that she was (among other things, she taught an intro to nutrition course) she took a look at the labels to see just what the difference was. As advertized, the second cake (although it's really a custard) had less fat, less calories... in fact it had less everything. Well, everything but slices that is.

The first dessert was set to be cut into 12 portions, and the second 16. In all other ways they were exactly identical. Same dessert, different label. Reducing the portion allowed the company to throw on the term "reduced fat" without having to put forth the effort of actually making a second product.

Furthermore, keep in mind that "reduced" or "light" is not the same as "low". Just because something is lower in fat, calories, or anything else than the original doesn't mean that it's not still really bad for you.

I'll throw this one out there while I'm on the subject - cholesterol. Some foods (peanut butter springs to mind) have advertised as being cholesterol free. They certainly are. Just as every other plant-based product in the world is. Cholesterol, a gunky fat-like substance, is only found in animal products. It's found in us, even. It's not all bad - much like everything else there's a good version and a bad version, but that's another story. There's nothing wrong with saying that there's no cholesterol in peanut butter (or anything else that doesn't have it, for that matter) but it's kind of like saying "No African pigmy babies were slaughtered en masse in the making of this peanut butter".

All I'm saying is that you should be aware of what you're buying. Don't be afraid to use any of these terms as a guide, but that's all they are, a general guide. If you really want to know what you're getting into, read the label. All you have to do is flip the box over.