Is Fat-Free the World's Biggest Marketing Scam?

Low-fat, fat-free or lite ‘products’ seem to be appearing everywhere and for good reason. The term ‘fat-free’ sells. Around 80% of women want to lose weight and this would appear to be the logical way forward wouldn’t it? Even though the typical price tag is higher on many low fat goods, the thought that we might squeeze into that swimsuit has many of us loading down our grocery store trolleys with these so-called ‘healthy foods’.

Will I lose weight by eating fat-free products?

You’d be forgiven for thinking that was a silly question, but as soon as these so called ‘fat-free’ products entered the market in the UK, Australia and America, people actually put on weight. It appears that when the manufacturers of products such as biscuits, cereal bars, cakes, yogurts and spreads took out fat, they laced them with sugar instead. It wasn’t just any sugar that was substituted either, it was cheap, sugary, corn syrup. This made the products taste better in the absence of fat but the trouble was that this often added calories rather than lessened them.

The trouble with corn syrup or hydrolysed corn starch is that it doesn’t fill the body up. No insulin or leptin is released in the body, which would be the case if you’d eaten products containing fat, which results in the body still feeling hungry. This often means you eat twice as much of the product, which is exactly what your local grocery store wants isn’t it? You buy more, they earn more. There is also evidence that corn syrup is addictive and if that wasn’t enough to put you off fat-free products, the sugar inside them is converted into body fat faster than eating fat alone.

You may have seen marshmallows advertised as 99% fat-free. Hands up who thought those were healthy? Yes, they have virtually no fat in them, but they are made up nearly entirely of sugar. Supermarkets and grocery stores are advertising these as healthy products? Has the world gone crazy?

Professor Kerin O’Dea, director of the Institute for Health Research in South Australia says that people would be better off eating full-fat yogurts rather than low-fat ones because of the amount of calories and sugar that many low-fat varieties contain. You could be eating up to 116 more kilojoules of energy per 100g and an additional 10 grams of sugar, by taking the fat-free option. Your body will convert this into fat even more quickly than if was faced with a full-fat yogurt and you won’t feel full. Crazy, isn’t it?

This isn’t true of all fat-free or low-fat products but consumers are advised to look at the labels of the food they are buying. Switching from full-fat to semi-skimmed milk is a healthy option and will help cut saturated fats out of your diet and reduce your calorie intake. Just avoid anything which has corn starch, corn syrup, fructose or sucrose on the label. It’s liable to do the exact opposite of what you were hoping for and as it generally costs more, you might as well treat yourself to the full-fat variety and enjoy it once in a while.