Heart Stroke and Food Lables

I watched an episode of Market Place on the Heart and Stroke foundation's heart healthy logo. Big surprise, the logo is meaningless. It reflects products that may have reduced salt or fat content, however, it does not mean that product is the healthiest choice. Further, it does not rate all foods, only products from companies that are willing to pay for the use of the logo. Although this is a great way for H&S to raise funds, it does not provide meaningful information to consumers.

Two things struck me when I watched the program.

1) Does anyone really believe that anything made by Vachon is healthy? Further, when you pick up a bag of french fries do you think you are making a healthy choice? Tastes great and healthy are not one in the same. Even with a heart logo on a Vachon product I know that I am eating crap. High sugar content and lousy ingredients. It is a cake after all what would I expect?

2) Somewhere along the line the woman that Represented the H&S program lost her believe in said program. She was struggling to support and back it up and under fire she was shot down. Perhaps she did not have the knowledge of the program to answer the questions. It was, however, clear to me that she did not have the passion or the vision to be speaking for the Heart logo.

The rest of the piece discussed other food check systems. I fail to see why we need one. I think we all know that buying frozen dinners and bags of french fries is really not the way to go. If we want to be heart smart and healthy buying fresh line caught salmon and having a salad is the way to do it. I think if we are honest about it the issue would go away. I love junk food, I over eat junk food and that is why I am out of shape. No mystery to me and I do not need a logo or a food check system to figure it out. When I am ready I will buy that salmon and pick up some cucumbers and a couple of tomatoes. I will also hit the gym. I'll cut back on refined sugar and stop buying cookies and food that comes in cans and boxes. I wont rely on H&S or any other marketing machine to show me what is healthy. There are lots of unbiased sources to research to find the truth. Here is one: Dr. Oz's and Dr. Roizen's site There are others as well. If you want to eat well and feed your children a healthy diet pull yourself out of the world of brands and marketing and just get back to the basics.