https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/01/heal...ness/index.html

I hadn't realized that there was such a thing as "limited claim" that allowed food manufacturers to print on their labels, but it certainly explains the origins of heart-healthy claims on cheerios and oatmeal.



This makes no sense at all - sugar is one of the primary triggers for diabetes, but somehow 2 cups/week of the highest sugar yogurt on the market can now claim to prevent diabetes.

And that means that the general public will have such confidence in their 2 cups of (15-30 g of added sugar per 5 oz serving) yogurt every week that they can eat all the M&Ms, Chips Ahoy, Dunkin' Donuts, Lucky Charms, McD's fries, and Doritos they want and believe the very fact that they ate yogurt will allow them to avoid ever getting diabetes!

You’re right, Calianna, this is nonsense brought forth by a food manufacturer trying to get the right to show labeling on the containers that tout the product as healthy to sell more products. Dannon has a vested interest in this. Similar to cereal concoctions with labels advertising “Heart Healthy.” It’s laughable.



Kinda says all you need to know.

I wonder what studies the FDA reviewed. I bet they were all done by companies that sell yogurt.

Can meat make the same claim???

All marketing ploys. Disappointing.

But actual food producers don't have the money or megalomania to create food fads, base their meals on children's movies, and fund slanted studies.



They lie to our faces.

So, according to the FDA a person's risk of diabetes will be reduced if they eat this 'food':

YoCrunch Low Fat Vanilla with OREO Yogurt

Calories: 120
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 2.5grm3%
Saturated Fat 1grm5%
Trans Fat 0grm0%
Cholesterol 5mg2%
Sodium 75mg0%
Total Carbohydrate 21grm8%
Dietary Fiber 0grm0%
Total Sugars 15grm0%
Added Sugars 11grm22%
Protein 3grm6%
Calcium 140mg10%
Iron 0.4mg2%
Potassium 160mg4%
* Percentage of Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.
Ingredients:
Lowfat Yogurt: Cultured Pasteurized Grade A Lowfat Milk, Sugar, Water, Modified Corn Starch, Contains Less Than 1% Of Natural Flavors, Potassium Sorbate (To Maintain Freshness), Malic Acid, Sodium Citrate, Vitamin D3. Oreos Cookie Pieces: Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Sugar, Palm And/Or Canola Oil, Cocoa (Processed With Alkali), High Fructose Corn Syrup, Leavening (Baking Soda And/Or Calcium Phosphate), Salt, Soy Lecithin, Chocolate, Artificial Flavor.

I'm still googling around for more information, but apparently the qualified health claims came into being to provide at least some kind of control over what supplement and food manufacturers could claim as benefits of their products.

This is from the FDA website:



To those who understand that a qualified health claim is not patent agreement by the FDA that there really is a health benefit to a certain food, it at least tones down some of the advertising from earlier decades.

Does anyone recall the old ads showing 90+ year olds hiking, horseback riding, splitting wood - all attributed to eating yogurt all their lives?

And that was just yogurt - Any food company would be able to find a few individuals who were well into their 80's or beyond and have eaten their particular food for their entire lives while staying healthy and active well into old age.

If anyone is interested in reading the (very lengthy) Qualified Health Claims letters to food manufacturers on all the foods currently allowed to display a QHC on their product:

https://www.fda.gov/food/food-label...ment-discretion

Yogurt is under the list related to Diabetes.

I didn't read all 51 pages, but I did notice bits in there about being able to pull the QHC at some point in the future if it turns out future data/statistics show sugared yogurts are not associated with reduced diabetes development (and they also pointed out that sugar consumption is associated with the development of diabetes, so it seems even they were skeptical about the claim, but put it through anyway)

________

While looking for that, I came across this:

Letter Regarding Dietary Supplement Health Claim for Fiber With Respect to Colorectal Cancer (Docket No. 91N-0098)

That was issued in 2000.

I checked the letters of approval to see if they'd changed their minds since then on fiber preventing cancer - nope, not on that list.

And yet, everywhere you turn, high fiber foods are still pushed as the #1 way to prevent colorectal cancer. (The letter does point out that people who eat a lot of fruits and vegetables get a lot of fiber in their diets and have lowered chances of colorectal cancer, but there's no concluding evidence that the fiber component is responsible, that it might very well be the nutrients in the fruits and veggies.)

I've seen worse.

I took a look at a Chobani Flip yogurt yesterday - 17 g of ADDED sugars! (And while the container holds even less than the "standard" 5 oz serving of yogurt, the yogurt section of the container is about 1/4 cup.

Healthy!

A lot of those yogurts are really liquid candies.

Yes they are.

They wouldn't sell nearly as much yogurt if it was not sugared-up.

And now the vast majority of them are not only sweetened within an inch of their lives, they're also fat-free.

I'm trying to comprehend how there was no difference in diabetes prevention between the ones who ate unsweetened yogurts and the one who hate sugary yogurts. The only thing I can imagine is that yogurt in general is considered to be a relatively healthy food - sugar or no sugar, fat or no fat.

People who care about their health are eating yogurt, where as people who don't care about their health will very likely simply eat candy or ice cream.

If they're eating yogurt for perceived health benefits, even if they're choosing the sugary ones, it's possible that they're making somewhat better food choices in general, even if they're not ideal food choices:

Someone who doesn't care one bit about healthy eating might choose a Big Mac, large fries, and full-sugar large drink, with an apple pie for dessert.


The more health conscious individual might have a salad, a deli chicken sandwich on whole grain, diet soda or water, and a yogurt for dessert.

Yeah, we can argue that the sandwich is providing a lot of carbs, but it's still only about 30 g carbs compared to the 46 carbs of a Big Mac, a salad will have very few carbs compared to the large fries (65g carbs). And of course we can talk about how the diet soda is bad for you because of the artificial sweeteners - but that diet soda won't have any carbs at all, compared to the 77 g of sugar in the large drink.

Even far less than ideal food and drink choices can make a huge difference in how much glucose floods the system after a meal, which could very well be why even those who eat full sugar yogurts are still managing to avoid diabetes.