I have two issues with this product. First, its the type of product from the food industry that I despise the most. Not necessarily because of its nutritional content (we'll get to that in a bit), but because of the assumptions it makes. This product assumes that we, modern humans, are just too busy to take the two seconds it would take to spread our own 'spread' on a piece of bread and we need this pre-packaged, processed solution. It is designed to eat on-the-go and encourages the type of rushed, unhealthy eating plaguing our society. Not only that, but it is pretending to be a healthy food!
Lets be clear, a piece of bread spread with something sugary and chocolatety (ahem, nutella) is not a healthy breakfast. Now, I enjoy nutella and eat it every once and while, but it is certainly not something to be consumed every morning with breakfast. So this product is taking an already unhealthy breakfast and making it more processed and packaged.
My second issue with this product is what you see down there at the bottom of the ad. Here's a zoom in:
To translate, that yellow text says "LU Petit Dejeuner contributes to a balanced breakfast with a fruit, a milk product and a hot beverage."
I read this to mean that the apple and milk product are healthy, and that you can add a Petit Dejeuner to make it less healthy. But most people aren't going to read that like I do. Unfortunately they are going to take this statement to mean that Petit Dejeuner is just as healthy as an apple and a glass of milk and part of a healthy breakfast.
(Does this sound familiar? Nutella recently got into some trouble in the US for claiming just such a thing)
To add insult to injury, do you really think people who are choosing this designed to eat on-the-go product are going to sit down and eat an apple and drink two beverages along with it? I highly doubt this will be the case.
And for the final piece de resistance, take a look at that ingredient list. Its tiny, and in french, so I'll translate. First ingredient: grains (58.9%) of which 35.3% comes from white flour and 23.6% whole grains/flours. The second ingredient: sugar. After that follows a litany of the processed foods cast of characters (additives, other forms of sugar, oils).
Each biscuit has 62 calories and 4.1 grams of simple sugars* So the package of three biscuits has 186 calories and 12.3 grams of sugar (that's 3 teaspoons of sugar by the way). Not the worst ever, but do you think eating 3 teaspoons of sugar for breakfast is a healthy way to start the day?
Does the 23.6% of this product coming from whole grains makes up for the rest of that ingredient list, including a good dose of sugar? Nope, sorry. Each biscuit has 0.66 g of fiber, making the pack of three contribute a whopping 1.98g of fiber. That doesn't go a long way toward the recommended 25-30g of fiber per day.
This is just another case where you'd be better off if you ignore the food advertising, ignore the pull towards the convenient and packaged products, and choose whole foods with real ingredients. How about a piece of 100% whole grain bread spread with (no sugar added) peanut butter + an apple and a glass of milk? Now that's a breakfast I'd be willing to endorse.
*dont sucre in French. From what I understand this is simple sugars -- glucose, fructose, etc -- and not necessarily added sugar. Although given that sugar is the second ingredient in this product most of the dont sucre is probably coming from added sugar. If someone has a more full explanation for the meaning of dont sucre on French nutrition labels, let me know!
4 comments:
Hi Courtney,
I'd like to address a few statements you make in the this post.
Firstly, breakfast is a marginal meal in Francophone culture. Consideration for what one has for breakfast is not the same as those who follow an American diet. Most nutrition comes at lunch time as I'm sure you have experienced.
Second, the recommendation of peanut butter in a Francphone diet seems strange. The food, much less a sugar-free version of it, exists as a novelty at best in their culture to the best of my knowledge.
Third, as an important correction, the rest of the ingredients after the flour and sugar in this product are by no means a "litany of processed food". The other ingredients are the standard components of any baked good as follows:
Vegetable oil, milk solids ("lactose and milk proteins"), low-fat cocoa powder, baking powder (leavening agent), hazelnut spread, emulsifier (soy lecithin), minerals (magnesium carbonate, iron), salt, vitamins (E, B3, B1).
You'll note that in Europe they call the vitamins by their letter/number not their chemical name, as they do in the US, to presumably avoid this problem. Additionally, you'll note the use of vegetable oil, not butter, and soy emulsifier, not egg. You could argue from the ingredients that this is a healthy choice compared to other cookies with preservatives... certainly not worse than something you'd buy in a French bakery.
Lastly, The European labels divide the carbs section of the nutrition label to show you both Total Carbs and the portion of the total carbs that is "simple sugar" or "dont sucre" (the part "of which is sugar")in other words the sugar that is immediately converted to energy...ie, high glycemic index.
This is presumably to inform people who are sensitive to that sort of thing like hyperglycemics and diabetics.
The only sugar in this recipe is the amount used as a standard ingredient and possibly some in the hazelnut spread though that isn't specified. You can not infer from any of the ingredients or description of the nutritional content that there is any "added sugar". Again, "dont sucre" is a subdivision of the total sugar content.
For example, cookie "X" has 23g of total carbs, 20g of carbs is simple sugar.
In the US we do the same by specifying the part of Total Carbs that is "Dietary Fiber" and "Sugar".
Check out this link diagramming EU nutrition labels:
http://www.davigel.fr/france/fr/Restauration-Sociale/Decoder-les-valeurs-nutritionnelles/Pages/Tableau-des-valeurs-nutritionnelles-facultatif-mais.aspx
Thank you for your comment. I appreciate your information and opinions. And thanks for the diagram about EU labels.
You are welcome to disagree with me, of course, but I feel I must clarify a few points.
The ingredient list clearly lists sucre as the second ingredient, so yes, there is added sugar in this product.
Adding emulsifiers, lactose and milk proteins is definitely not done by the home cook and are not found in whole foods in isolated forms like that, so yes, this is a processed food with processed food ingredients.
Nor do I believe that adding vitamins to an otherwise nutrient-poor product makes it healthy.
Hello! I found your blog through Eat, Live, Run and I'm so excited! I'm also an American living in Belgium. I'm up in the Flanders region. Anyway, I'm loving following your adventure. I have many of the same struggles, so it's nice to see I'm not alone.
xxx, Fitzalan
Hello Fitzalan! Great to hear from a fellow american in Belgium! If you're ever in the Brussels area, let me know. Would be glad to meet and compare stories over a cup of coffe.
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