Would you buy cookies?
2023-11-15
Many people think that biscuits are delicious and easy to carry. They can satisfy hunger and serve as snacks. Nowadays, many biscuits are labeled with health labels such as "whole grain" and "sugar-free", so they are even more popular. Statistics show that in the past five years, the total output and sales of biscuits have increased by an average of 20% annually.
Whole grain biscuits, not too much coarse grains but not too much oil
Coarse grain biscuits generally refer to a type of food in which wheat bran, whole grains, whole wheat flour and other raw materials are added to the biscuits to greatly increase the dietary fiber content. Many biscuits use "whole grain" and "crude fiber" as their selling points, which makes people feel that they can quickly obtain dietary fiber by eating "coarse grain" and "high fiber" biscuits. Whole grain biscuits seem to be very healthy.
Dietary fiber can increase the feeling of fullness, delay the rise of blood sugar after meals, help the body prevent constipation and intestinal cancer, and is beneficial to the health of the large intestine. Today's people's diet is too refined, so the nutrition community particularly advocates eating more whole grains appropriately. The reason why whole grains are "coarse" is because they have high dietary fiber content, and the high content of dietary fiber is destined to have a rough texture. Nowadays, we have become accustomed to refined white rice and refined white noodles. If we eat whole grains with this eating habit, more than 2% of fiber will make us feel "stuck in the throat". However, the coarse-grain biscuits we usually eat are not only not coarse, but also have a very delicate texture. What is the reason for this? There are only two reasons: first, there are not so many whole grains in biscuits; second, there is a lot of fat in biscuits.
The content of insoluble dietary fiber in whole grain biscuits is high, and the fiber is rough. The higher the content, the more "throat-piercing" it will be. What to do? This is where grease comes in handy. With fats (especially saturated fats are more effective), dietary fiber is softened, and rough biscuits will become delicate, crispy, and fragrant. This biscuit contains 33 grams of fat per 100 grams. You might as well do the math: a pack of biscuits is 168 grams, so the fat in this pack of biscuits is 55.44 grams. The "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents" recommends that each person consume 20 to 30 grams of fat per day, and this pack of biscuits almost doubles the recommended amount!
Think about your surroundings. Are there people who often eat whole grain biscuits for lunch or dinner, hoping to lose weight with the help of whole grains? Do some people use whole grain biscuits as snacks to fill their stomachs and add some dietary fiber? Now you understand, eating whole grain biscuits and eating whole grains as recommended by nutritionists are two different things.
The main raw materials of coarse grain biscuits are wheat flour and oil, while "coarse grain" raw materials that truly provide dietary fiber, such as wheat bran, buckwheat, and oats, rank third or even lower. According to the requirements of my country's "General Principles for Nutritional Labeling of Prepackaged Foods", if a food is claimed to be "high in dietary fiber", the dietary fiber content must be ≥ 6 g/100 g; if it is claimed to be "containing dietary fiber", the dietary fiber content must also be ≥ 3g/100g.
Wheat germ is rich in iron, zinc, selenium and other minerals. In addition to being rich in dietary fiber, bran also contains B vitamins and polyphenols and other antioxidants. Therefore, whole-wheat flour is more nutritious than whole grain biscuits. Wheat flour + wheat bran.
Sugar-free cookies are not necessarily sugar-free
Low-sugar and sugar-free foods are the most popular foods for the elderly, obese people and people with high blood sugar, and the same is true for biscuits. However, are they really lower in calories and slower to raise blood sugar than those "sugar cookies"?
This requires understanding several concepts. Once the concepts are clear, consumers can analyze them themselves.
The so-called sugar-free foods are relative to conventional sugar-containing foods. Sugar-free foods should not contain refined sugar, including monosaccharides (such as glucose, fructose, galactose) and disaccharides (such as sucrose, lactose, maltose, etc.). The sweetness of sugar-free foods comes from sweeteners, such as xylitol, sorbitol, maltitol, mannitol, etc. They do not produce calories but have a sweet taste, which meets the needs of diabetics and obese people.
Sucrose-free food means that the food should not contain sucrose. So, does being sucrose-free mean sugar-free?
In fact, in the ingredient lists of many sugar-free foods, we cannot find "sucrose", but we can find words such as "glucose syrup", "maltodextrin" and "starch syrup". They are all energy-containing sugars. . In fact, blood sugar in the human body refers to glucose in the blood. Although some sugar-free foods do not use "sucrose", if they use glucose, which raises blood sugar more directly, and maltose, which raises blood sugar the fastest, (composed of two molecules of glucose) or maltodextrin (an intermediate product of starch decomposition, composed of several glucose molecular composition), which is very dangerous for diabetics. This is why some diabetics experience greater blood sugar fluctuations after eating such "sugar-free" foods.
There are also some foods that are labeled "sucrose-free" but contain white granulated sugar in the ingredient list. Sucrose and white granulated sugar are the same thing, but they are called differently by folk and professionals.
Therefore, sugar-free is not only sucrose-free, sucrose-free does not mean other sugar-free. The same goes for sugar-free cookies. Even if there is no sucrose in the biscuits, even if maltitol, xylitol, and sucralose are used that will not directly increase blood sugar, the main raw material of the biscuits is still flour, and in order to make up for the sugar vacancy, the content of flour and oil will increase accordingly. Increase. Flour will also increase blood sugar, and the increase in fat will be of no benefit to people who want to lose weight or have diabetes.
In fact, for people with diabetes, what they should pay attention to in their diet is to control their total energy intake. Under the condition of controlling the total energy, it is okay to eat two sugar cookies occasionally, but if you eat "sugar-free" cookies boldly, it will be counterproductive.
The national standard "General Principles for the Labeling of Prepackaged Special Dietary Foods" stipulates that the requirements for "sugar-free" foods refer to the sugar content of solid or liquid foods not exceeding 0.5 grams per 100 grams or 100 ml. higher than 5 grams.
Take Meidan white soda biscuits (fresh green onion flavor, no sucrose) as an example, the energy per 100 grams is 2381 kilojoules. Generally speaking, an adult male needs 2,400 kilocalories of energy per day, equivalent to 10,042 kilojoules; an adult woman needs 2,100 kilocalories of energy per day, equivalent to 8,787 kilojoules. If you eat a 100-gram pack of biscuits, it will consume nearly 1/5 to 1/4 of the energy in a day. Obviously, using "sugar-free cookies" to lose weight and lower blood sugar is just psychological comfort.
The biscuits are both sweet and salty
Salt is indispensable as a seasoning in daily cooking, and it also supplements sodium for the human body. The sodium in biscuits mainly comes from leavening agents such as baking soda and baking powder. Of course, some salty crackers also contain salt.
For example, a pack of Garden Chive Pancakes has a net content of 100 grams and a sodium content of 658 mg. 100 grams of biscuits is easy to eat, which means that you will consume 658 milligrams of sodium in one pack of biscuits. "Salt content = sodium content × 2.5", according to this calculation, if you eat a pack of these biscuits at one time, it is equivalent to eating 1.6 grams of salt in one go.
Excessive dietary sodium intake will increase the burden on the kidneys, and excessive salt intake is positively correlated with the onset of hypertension. How much salt should we eat a day? The World Health Organization recommends: 5 grams.
When buying biscuits, be sure to read the ingredient list and nutritional label on the package, and try to buy low-fat, low-sugar and low-calorie biscuits. Now, when you go to the supermarket to buy biscuits, you will definitely look at the labels, right?
