You Can Have Your Chips and Eat Healthy, Too

by Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Any nutritionist worth her salt will recommend eating an apple or carrot sticks if you want a healthy, nutritious snack. But can you imagine serving crudités, tofu kabobs, and rice cakes when "the gang" comes over to watch the big game on television? Even the most health-conscious among us have to admit that there are times when only cookies, chips, crackers, dips, and spreads will do.

"Snack foods are a big issue with my clients," admits Connie Diekman, a St. Louis-based registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. "They want to know: 'Can I still eat them?' 'How much can I eat?' and 'What else do I have to give up?'" Of course, if you choose to snack on fruit or low-fat yogurt you'll get fiber, calcium and other important nutrients your body needs. "My advice is to reach for these types of foods first and then to munch on your favorite snack food," says Diekman.

Naomi Kulakow, coordinator of food labeling education in the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, points out that the new food label gives consumers options to find variety, balance and moderation — the cornerstone of a healthy diet — in their snack food choices. "Consumers now have the information they need to make informed choices among the foods they like — they now have a tool to help them control portion sizes, and make dietary tradeoffs or substitutes," she says.

Another option is products containing olestra, a fat-based substitute for conventional fats. (See "Olestra Approved with Special Labeling.")

"When choosing snack foods, I advise my clients to figure out what is more important to them — eating a larger portion of the reduced-fat version or eating a smaller amount of the full-fat version," Diekman says. "For instance, if a serving of potato chips is 1 ounce (28 grams), there may be 16 chips per serving for the full-fat version and 30 for the fat-free version." Diekman adds that many of her clients incorporate their favorite snacks into their diets by giving up other things, such as not putting dressing on their salads.

She finds that "most people are interested in a particular product attribute — the number of calories or sodium content — and may base their snack food choices on that one factor."

Being Upfront About Nutrients

Many well-known brands of snack foods are now available in reduced-fat or reduced-sodium versions so you can steer clear of nutritional land mines without being a party pooper. However, the trick is to find lower calorie, fat or salt versions of your favorite snacks, and to compare the amount that makes up a portion with the amount you normally eat so you can incorporate snack foods into your diet without overdosing on fat and salt.

How many tortilla chips make a serving? Which has less sodium per serving, salsa or bean dip? Does a half cup of "party mix" contain more fat than an equal amount of mixed nuts? Thanks to the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990, the answers to such questions can be easily found on virtually all packaged and processed foods. Redesigned in 1994 in accordance with regulations developed jointly by FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the food label now provides more consistent and reliable information about:

• nutrient claims, such as "reduced sodium" or "low fat"
• serving size and number of servings in the package or container
• %Daily Values, which show how much of certain nutrients a serving contributes to your daily diet overall
• all ingredients, including additives, artificial colors and natural and artificial flavors.

"A quick, easy way to spot healthier varieties of cookies, chips and other snack foods, is to be on the lookout for products that carry the nutrient claims 'fat free,' 'low fat,' 'light,' 'low sodium,' 'lightly' salted, or 'reduced' calorie, fat or sodium on the front of the package," suggests Kulakow. "You can trust these claims because they are among a number of descriptive terms that the government has created precise definitions for, and all foods making such nutrient claims must meet stringent criteria," she adds. (See "Smart and Easy.")

Real-Life Serving Sizes

"Before the new food label regulations went into effect, a serving size was whatever the manufacturer said it was — and many packages did not even list this information," Diekman says. "For instance, people used to assume that a small bag of potato chips contained a single serving. That wasn't always true before, but it's true now. The label also alerts consumers that a bag containing more than 2 ounces (60 g) of chips contains more than one serving." Knowing the number of servings in a package is important because the amount of fat, sodium or calories listed on the label is based on serving size, she adds.

You can find the serving sizes and number of servings per package on the Nutrition Facts panel. Serving sizes are listed in both household and metric units — for example, 14 chips (28 g) — and are more uniform across product lines to enable you to compare the nutrient profiles of, say, baked potato chips and fried potato chips.

In addition, serving sizes must be based on values from government food consumption surveys, so they bear a closer resemblance to amounts that people typically eat. "But keep in mind that if you eat more or less of a snack food than the serving size listed on the label, you'll have to adjust the fat, sodium and caloric content accordingly," Diekman cautions. That means if the serving size is 14 potato chips and you eat 28, you'll have to take into account that you've munched and crunched twice as much fat, sodium and calories as the amounts listed on the label.

About the Author

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FDA is A United States government body that oversees medical devices, including contact lenses, intraocular lenses, excimer lasers and eyedrops. In the US, these products must be approved by the FDA before they can be marketed.