Foods Loaded With Sugar, Salt and Fat? Bring It
By STEPHANIE STROM

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Dark chocolate is in. So, too, is beef jerky. And full-fat ice cream? You bet.

Driven by fast-changing definitions of what is healthy to eat, people are turning to foods they shunned just a couple of years ago. Studies now suggest that not all fat, for example, necessarily contributes to weight gain or heart problems. That has left companies scrambling to push some foods that they thought had long passed their popularity peak — and health advocates wondering what went wrong.

Under the new thinking, not all fat is bad, and neither are all salty foods. A stigma among the public remains for sugar substitutes, but less so for cane sugar, at least in moderation. And all of those attributes are weighed against qualities like simplicity and taste.

“I think the risk-reward equation has changed,” said Steve French, a managing partner at the Natural Marketing Institute, a research firm, said.

Edy’s ice cream, known as Dreyer’s west of the Rockies, is a case in point. Edy’s sold 10.8 percent more of its Edy’s Grand Ice Cream, a full-fat ice cream, in the 52 weeks that ended Feb. 21 compared with the year before, according to IRI, a data and research firm. Other full-fat ice creams also had sales gains.

Over the same period, Edy’s sold 4.8 percent less of its Slow-Churned Ice Cream, made with a process that lowers the fat content. When the product was introduced in 2004, it was promoted as having less fat and fewer calories — and sales soared.

Now, that sort of marketing is gone. Instead, the company has retooled some of its Slow-Churned products to make them with fewer ingredients and to include cane sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup, which many consumers don’t like. Labels on those ice creams will also tell consumers that they contain no genetically engineered ingredients.

The devil, of course, is in the details of those new scientific findings. None of the new studies, for instance, recommend eating as much bacon as you want.

“The new definition of modern health is very different from the traditional view, which was to reduce fat, sugar and sodium,” said Robert Kilmer, president of Nestlé Dreyer’s Ice Cream, a division of Nestlé USA. “Healthy now is about what’s in my food and where did it come from.”

Food companies have been working feverishly over the last several years to offer what consumers perceive as improved nutritional content and healthier food. Sales of products made from organic ingredients have risen sharply in recent years, for example.

Mars Food, a division of the privately held Mars candy company whose brands include Uncle Ben’s and Dolmio, reduced sodium by over 20 percent in many of its products and recently announced a plan to go even further. And General Mills is eliminating artificial colors and flavors from its cereals — no more neon hues in Trix.

But consumers are constantly recalculating the pros and cons of the foods they eat — leading to some unexpected foods rising in popularity.

For example, in 2015, Americans checked the fat content on food labels less often than they did in 2006, according to research from the Natural Marketing Institute. They’re focusing more on the list of ingredients, a product’s environmental impact and animal welfare — the famous “Farm” episode in “Portlandia” in which a waitress can tell diners the name of the chicken they’ll be eating remains relevant five years after it was first shown.

And don’t forget about taste. A majority of Americans say they value taste more than how healthy a food is.

This can be frustrating for food executives, who spent years getting salt, sugar and fat out of a wide variety of products, paying high costs in development and marketing along the way. Michael Sharp, the research scientist at Nestlé who has presided over the reformulation of its Slow-Churned ice creams, noted that all of the ingredients he is working to eliminate today were originally added to the product for good reasons.

“The ingredients we’ve subtracted either had some functionality on their own or improved the functionality of other ingredients,” Mr. Sharp said. “Corn syrup adds a lot of body and bulk to a product — but the consumer doesn’t want it today.”

Nutrition experts are watching the shift warily. Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a research and advocacy group, noted that companies have gone a long way toward reducing or eliminating saturated fats, which raise cholesterol in the blood and increase the risk of heart disease.

The American Heart Association and other health advocacy groups have long recommended limiting consumption of saturated fat. But in recent years, studies have suggested that maybe saturated fat is not as bad as once thought. One analysis of research on saturated fats, which generated some criticism, blurred the link between it and heart disease. Another study concluded that skim milk did not appear to restrict weight gain among young children.

That rethinking seems to have encouraged some consumers to return to full-fat foods. Edy’s French Vanilla Grand ice cream, for example, has four grams of saturated fat in every half-cup. A half-cup of the same flavor in its Slow-Churned variety, the recently less popular option, has 1.5 grams of saturated fat.

Similarly, the public appears to have been persuaded by some evidence that eating dark chocolate is good for the heart. Technavio, a market research firm, predicted that sales would increase an average of more than 8 percent a year through 2019.

But the federal government also recommends a limit on total fat consumption — the combination of bad and good fats. An eight-ounce bar of Ghirardelli 72% Intense Dark chocolate supplies more than the government’s daily recommendation for saturated fat and more than three-quarters of the recommendation for total fat.

“There are recommended limits on total fat that I think have sort of gotten lost in the marketing,” Ms. Wootan said. “There’s nothing in science that tells you it’s healthy to eat as much fat as you want, just as long as it’s not saturated fat.”

Another sore point among nutritionists is the rising sales of jerky, once regarded as little more than a sodium delivery mechanism. Now, as consumers clamor for foods high in protein, jerky has become a popular option. One ounce delivers about a quarter of the daily recommended amount of protein and costs roughly $2.50.

Sales of meat snacks like jerky shot up 46.9 percent from 2011 to 2015, to more than $2.6 billion, according to Nielsen, a market research firm.

“Jerky is manly, jerky is kind of rednecky and jerky can even be kind of offensive if people don’t know what it is,” said Troy Link, chief executive of Link Snacks, a family-owned snack food business. “So we changed things up and began calling it a protein snack, and now jerky is being eaten by higher-end health eaters who haven’t been involved in the category before.”

Link Snacks’ most popular product, Jack Link’s Teriyaki Beef Jerky, delivers 12 grams of protein and just 80 calories in a one-ounce serving — and one-fifth the daily recommended amount of sodium. Mr. Link said the company had worked to reduce the sodium in its products, along with getting rid of monosodium glutamate and nitrites.

“For the most part, sodium has become good again, and I think certain fats have become good again, too,” he said.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “people want something that tastes good.”

好吃是王道！高糖高脂食物再流行

紐約時報報導，健康食品的定義一變再變，美國民眾重新開始擁抱前兩年避之唯恐不及的巧克力、牛肉乾和全脂冰淇淋。

怎樣吃才健康的最新研究與過去有不同結論，例如並非所有脂肪都會導致體重增加和心臟疾病，這使得先前人氣下滑的產品開始回溫。

醉爾思冰淇淋（Dreyer's）旗下Edy's品牌的銷售佳績就是一例。

根據研調機構IRI數據，Edy's全脂冰淇淋系列在2月21日之前的52周，銷售比前一年增加10.8%。其他全脂冰淇淋也見成長。在此同時，Edy's號稱低脂低卡的Slow Churned系列，2004年推出時雖叫好又叫座，現今銷售卻年減4.8%。

醉爾思為此改變行銷方式，一方面減少Slow Churned冰淇淋使用的原料，以蔗糖取代消費者不喜歡的高果糖玉米糖漿，一方面貼標註明不含基因改造成分。

醉爾思董事長基爾默說：「傳統健康觀點是減脂、減糖和減鈉，但現代新定義大異其趣。大家在意的是食物原料和來源。」

一度被認為是鈉含量高的不健康零食牛肉乾，銷售也增加。尼爾森公司數據顯示，自2011至2015年間，肉品類零食銷售大增46.9%，營業額超過2.6億美元。

1盎斯重的牛肉乾約為每日建議蛋白質攝取量的四分之一，僅要價約2.5美元。

消費者也相信吃黑巧克力有益心臟健康。

市調公司Technavio預估，至2019年底銷售可平均年增逾8%。

這些是消費者不斷自行權衡得失的結果，何況大多數美國人重視食物滋味更勝於健康程度。不過，攝取任何食品的重點都是不能過量。

巧克力、牛肉乾等銷售回溫，對食品業者來說有些令人沮喪，他們耗時多年研究減糖、減鹽和減脂的技術，已付出高額研發成本並投下大筆行銷經費。

瑪爾斯食品（Mars Food）為旗下眾多產品減鈉逾20%，並宣布將持續為之。通用磨坊（General Mills）也正努力為旗下穀物麥片去除人工色素和香料。

從事零食製造的凌克說：「大家最終還是想要嚐起來味美的東西。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/23/business/foods-loaded-with-sugar-salt-and-fat-bring-it.html

2016-04-25．聯合晚報．A6．國際焦點．編譯季晶晶