'Light' foods may not be best choice for dieters. New low-carb products, such as Carb Karma ice cream from Ben & Jerry's, have been streaming into grocery stores, but they may not offer as much benefit as consumers hope.

By Karen Collins
Updated: 9:21 a.m. ET July 09, 2004

New low-carb products are drawing more dieters back into the dessert and beverage aisles of grocery stores, but can they actually help people lose weight?


Since dropping pounds ultimately comes down to burning more calories than you consume, these products may not provide much benefit. In this week's Nutrition Notes column, Karen Collins discusses the pros and cons of two of the latest low-carb products now available on the market.

Question: Does low-carb ice cream help people lose weight?

Answer: Keep in mind that there is no legal definition of low-carb. Ice cream labeled "for use with low carb diets" uses sugar substitutes for sweetness and gums and cellulose gel for thickness. The brand most widely available right now produces an ice cream containing 130 to 140 calories in a half-cup serving, which is the same as regular ice cream. The total and saturated fat content of the products is about equal, too.

Since the bottom line for weight control is how many calories you eat compared to how many you burn up, low carb versions of ice cream offer no advantage. You should certainly avoid thinking that this "diet" ice cream allows you to eat larger portions.

If you want to lose weight and still include ice cream in your diet, "light" ice cream is a better choice. This ice cream cuts the fat (and cholesterol-raising saturated fat) in half and reduces calories by 10 to 20 percent.

Another option, "no sugar added light" ice cream cuts fat about in half and uses sugar substitutes, so calories are reduced 30 percent below regular ice cream. Ice cream that's 98 percent fat-free lowers calories even further, but even this fat reduction only saves 50 calories in a half-cup serving. You're almost sure to cut more calories than that by simply eating only half of your usual portion. Or instead of a nightly necessity make it a weekly treat.

Q: What should I know about the new "light" juices?

A: Because of the widespread interest in low-carbohydrate diets, juice consumption has dropped. In response, food companies are offering lower carbohydrate versions.

If you look closely, however, you'll notice that these drinks are labeled "juice beverages" or "juice drinks" — not "juices." An equal serving of these lower-carbohydrate products contains less sugar and fewer calories than regular juice. But that's because these products are diluted with water, flavorings and possibly a no-calorie sweetener, and contain only 10 to 60 percent juice. Nutrients are added as well to make them comparable to 100 percent juices in the amount of vitamin C, B-6 and folate that they provide.

Some products even add more nutrients not usually found in juice, like calcium and vitamin E. While these new products are a reasonable way to get vitamins and cut calories by about one-third, you could also drink a smaller portion of 100 percent juices. For example, try a USDA standard serving size of six ounces, instead of eight or more ounces. This way, you would have an excellent source of vitamins and obtain the full array of cancer-fighting, health-promoting phytochemicals found in undiluted fruit juice.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5388608/

btw, i've become very adept at sensing anti low-carb reports. it has gotten to the point where i can just look at a picture of a person and tell where they stand on low-carb dieting.

for example, this woman is likely to tell us about the evils of saturated fat and dietary cholesterol and that we must count calories.

Well said Nolin. Since starting my high protein, low carbohydrate WOE I've lost 65 pounds in 23 weeks and I haven't counted a single calorie in that time.

Is it really too much to ask people writing articles about this subject to at least read the science behind the diet before trying to make their points?

Sheesh!

what fat cells actually do.........makes one wonder if anything except an all out effort will ever win this constant battle.
Does give one pause however in terms of destroying a lot of stereotypes regarding will power etc.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...-2004Jul11.html

Interesting article. In fact I think it deserves it's own thread. You should post it again as a new thread

Yeah, it IS asking to much. Karen probably had eight hours to write the above article. Her editor handed her a press release and said "this is your assignment for today".

Quick, Solaris. Your assignment for today is to give me an article of 350 words (no more, no less) on the subject of pet allergies. You know about health, don't you? So you're the perfect reporter for this! Here's a press release to get you started:

http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/jul2004/niehs-06.htm

Remember you'll need three sources, so you better get on the phone right now, since seven hours from now you're going to be crying to me, your editor, that no one is calling you back. And hey, if you can link this story to terrorism or that new low-carb diet craze, all the better.

I need this on my desk by 6 p.m. PDT, so I can read it, edit it, write a semi-misleading but oh-so-provocative headline, and send it to the layout department in 30 minutes.

Good luck, cub. Don't screw this up.

well, it's partly my fault for not posting a link to the story (which i've just added), but the woman (karen collins) doing the Q & A is supposedly a registered dietician and should therefore presumably know a little more about low-carb diets than your average reporter. she's asking and answering the questions, which indicates to me that she sees herself as an expert in this area. don't these people ever get tired of running out the same trite nonsense about low-carb diets? reading some research that's been done in the past ten years or so wouldn't hurt, would it?

The title dietician just means they've been brainwashed by hours and hours of lectures which boil down to:

Fat is bad!
Carbs are Good!
Bread is perfection!
Throw the toppings off your pizza and eat the crust only!

How many registered dieticians are there in the world ...thousands? Since they all seem to be all mindlessly brain-washed into believing the same thing, you can expect thousands of articles all saying the same old trite thing.

They should get together and proclaim : We the registered dieticians of the world firmly believe in the One True Faith: A Calorie is a Calorie. The only way to loose weight is through Balanced Eating and Exercise. We will not corrupt our minds with the reading of sacrilegious texts for we know the Truth.

Then they should get the USD to write up a set of nutrition guidelines, making sure that all commercial interests are given the proper consideration according to how much money they contribute and consolidate this into the Nutrition Bible.

Then they can rest knowing that everything there is to know and that is worth knowing is contained in one big unchanging text. And the rest of us can continue to soundly ignore them in peace.

Of course this is true of any professional education. To become a registered dietician, you not only have to learn all of the stuff, but you have to BELIEVE it, too. All professional education is structured to remove people who don't believe it what it teaches, to weed out the unbelievers. There are no low-carbers coming out of dietetics schools, just like there are no anarchists coming out of law schools or communists coming out of the Harvard MBA program.

Secret: Journalists are trained the same way.

Now I can see why there's not a single source quoted in the above article. No self-respecting journalist could write such a mess. Good thing she's not a journalist. (Got scared there for a second.)

Solaris, how's your story coming? Clock's ticking.

Caveman, I'm getting there.... a bloke down my local pub, who's an expert on all things, reckons that there is no way to stop pet allergies, so it's best to kill all pets and solve the problem that way... the story just needs a bit of padding out and I'll be there!

'
Nolin- Is this your step-mother?

MISSED YOUR DEADLINE?!?! That's the kiss of death for any reporter! Didn't you learn that in journalism school?

Let me show you something, Solaris. See this? It's a file cabinet. Let's open it, shall we? Packed pretty full, isn't it. Do you know what all this paper is? It's the resumes of people who want your job. They are waiting for you to screw up and get fired, so they can take your place making the measly wages that reporters make. So you better write what we tell you to write, or you're going to be looking for another place of employment! But no pressure, eh?

With that in mind, you're off the pet allergy story, although I did like your angle. I've decided to promote you! You're our new Health Columinst! You know about health, don't you?

I'm doing this because the great advertizing minds at this newspaper have found that anti-Atkins articles are a big hit! But not how you think. It seems that all the pro-Atkins people post our anti-Atkins articles to a forum, and we get tons of hits that way! It's GREAT for ad revenue! Don't worry, we won't have to address all the hate mail we'll get in any meaningful way.

So every week, write an anti-Atkins article and pump up those ad revenues to make the board of directors happy. Okay? You can do it, I know you can.

Now, as your editor, I know even less than you about diets, so here's a story idea to get you started: I want you to go down to the pub and find some blokes who tried Atkins and failed. You know, the ones who didn't eat any vegetables or drink enough water or take a multivitamin. In fact, find some blokes who tried Atkins and didn't even read the book. That will get those pro-Atkins people clicking!

And here's a little research to get you started: RESEARCH

Hadn't thought about it from that angle. Good point! But what they don't realize is if they put in an article that's pro-low-carbing, it would also get tons of hits. Just look at Gary Taubes' article in the New York Times Magazine? How many times has it been passed around, and that's mainly because you can't get it from the original site without paying for it. If they made the page available and put ads on it from some low-carb food manufacturer they'd get thousands of hits. I would always much prefer sending someone to the link of a website rather than post the whole story. But if the website doesn't stick around, or you'll have to pay after a certain time, I feel it falls under "fair use" if it's for educational purposes to copy the whole thing.

Frankly, I think a good, well-reasoned article gets a much better hit rate over the long term, whereas the common-as-dirt anti-lc rant gets noticed once and then we're past it to complain about the next one.

But then, good, well-reasoned articles take time, and as you pointed out, that's a commodity that's in short supply in the newsroom.

Plane Crazy