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Diet food: True or sale tactic?
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Catering to increasingly health conscious people these days, the market is flooded with 'Diet' food - supposedly low-calorie that help lose weight.
There's a whole new range of diet food that's available on the shelves - diet snacks, diet sweets, products with less oil and low on sugar.
Store owners claim to have products with as little as 4 per cent oil.
Panchal, manager at Samarth Dry fruits said, ''We use little oil and spices. We try and keep it as light as possible.''
But are these low calorie claims fact or fiction? NDTV sent some samples of these diet foods for a lab-test and the results were astounding.
-It was found that 100 grams of regular wafers contain 600 calories and 100 grams of diet wafers contain 400 calories.
-100 grams of diet dry fruits, sweets contain 360 calories.
-100 grams of baked karanji contain 600 calories.
-100 grams of honey kajupuri contain 900 calories.
-100 grams of baked biscuits contain 400 calories.
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On an average, an individual requires 1500 to 2000 calories every day. So with the laboratory tested calorie figures, how can these food items help lose weight?
Dr Arvind Shenoy, former chief, Consumer Guidance Society of India said, ''Putting together whole pieces of dry fruit, cashew, almonds and pistachio, doesn't make it diet food. They should state that if you eat 100 gms, then you consume 200 calories.''
So next time you reach out for such food, think twice the calories than mentioned.
Source: NDTVAll rights reserved.