PERCEPTION versus REALITY (You and The Food Industry)

The food industry has mastered the art of communication with food consumers so skillfully that they know the exact methods to use in their packaging and adverts to attract patronage of their products. 
They know the public is becoming increasingly health conscious as such they have to align to the new trend or lose patronage and close shop.
But do they really make healthy food products? 

In the real sense of it, very few food brands make completely healthy food products. A greater number of them are just masters in the art of illusion. They use perception as an apt tool of their trade.
What do I mean? 
These guys use few healthy ingredients in their products but package and advertise them in such a way as to draw the attention of consumers to the healthy ingredient, and away from the plenteous less healthy, sometimes harmful ingredients also added in their food products.
Take for example, Oat biscuit. This is produced with weight watchers or low calorie consumers in mind. For people who wouldn't want to eat white flour products because of weight issues and diabetes. 
When you see the word Oat Biscuit, what comes to your mind is, Oats: Oat is healthy, Oat is wholesome, Oat contains fiber, Oat is good. Yes, Oat is good. But that is not all there is to it. 

For starters, the word is Oat BISCUIT. Did you now take note of the biscuit part of it? 
What ingredients are used to make buscuit?
Flour,
Sugar,
Eggs,
Binder/ lubricant (margarine, butter, or oil)
These are the basics that must be present.
For oat biscuit, the flour is Whole oats which in itself is a healthy food ingredient. But what of the other ingredients, just how healthy are they? 
Sugar- the reason why weight watchers and diabetics run from white flour products is because white flour is readily converted to sugar in the body, raising the level of sugar speedily in the blood. The sugar they are avoiding is still added to this product.
Lubricant- There are available  healthy oils from plants like olive oil, soya oil, sesame oil etc that can be used for baking but in the case of most food industries butter or margarine is used. Butter and margarine are fats from animal sources and contain bad cholesterol. Margarine also contains trans fatty acids which predispose people who consume it regularly to heart diseases. 
There is also high presence of sodium in most packaged food products. 
Sometimes some quantity of white flour is still added to oat pastry products and whole wheat pastry products too, to enable the products hold together and not break up. 

Now you know. 
Next time you want to go for 'healthy products', please read the label and judge for yourself if your perception is really reality. 

Do Eat Responsibly!