Nutritional information needed online to crack obesity epidemic

SUPERMARKETS should provide more nutritional information on their websites to stop weight-conscious shoppers making unhealthy choices, an obesity expert has warned.

A new study by experts at Rotherham Institute for Obesity (RIO) found that while most low fat supermarket products contain a third fewer calories, one in ten contain more or the same than full fat versions mainly due to added sugars.

But of the ten most popular UK supermarkets examined, just four provided online shopping facilities with nutritional information - which RIO director Dr Matthew Capehorn branded “disturbing” and misleading for shoppers.

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Dr Capehorn said: “We have around 2,000 referrals a year and find that a large majority of these patients have misconceptions about how to lose weight, one being they will lose weight if they eat low fat food.

“Restricting calories is more important for weight loss than fat or sugar intake. Overall our findings were positive, but when ten per cent of ‘low fat’ foods have higher calories, then people can make mistakes.

“It’s also disturbing that only four of the ten supermarkets provided nutritional information online, If you’re shopping, you can pick up an item and read the label but without that information online you cannot make an informed choice.”

Researchers from the Rotherham institute, which is funded by the local authority, looked at foods such as bread, cheese and yoghurt on sale online by Sainsbury’s, Asda, Waitrose and Tesco in November last year.

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Fat, sugar and calorie content for any low fat food that had a directly comparable regular fat product made by the same brand were recorded and analysed.

Of the 62 products examined, 56 of the low fat versions had fewer calories, and on average 31 per cent less calories.

But 10 per cent had more or the same amount of calories as the regular fat alternative.

One low fat branded product, an Asda Italian salad dressing, even had more fat than the regular fat alternative.

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Dr Capehorn will present the research at the European Congress of Obesity in Sofia, Bulgaria, today.

He will also speak on a report which showed that markers used to determine the success of weight loss programmes may be wrongly labelling patients as failures, when increased muscle mass, for example, means that their weight stays stable despite sometimes large drops in body fat.

Obesity patients’ success should be measured on “the bigger picture” rather than simply on their weight at the end of the programme, Dr Capehorn said.

“All the measure we have got, such as weight and BMI, are tools we can use to see if people are heading in the right direction, but without an amount of detail we can wrongly label people as not making progress when actually they are a lot healthier,” he said.

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Research from Spain showed that people who eat more than two portions of white bread a day are at 40 per cent increased risk of being overweight or obese compared with those who ate very little white bread.
The findings, by the University of Navarra, were also presented at the conference. The researchers followed early 1,000 graduates over five years and found no obesity links with whole grain bread.