TORONTO – Reading nutrition labels may make you a cautious consumer, but it doesn’t necessarily make you a healthier eater.
A new global study involving Canadian research shows that Americans know more about how much fat is lurking in the food on their tables compared to Canadians and French consumers.
Scientists at the University of Laval in Quebec collaborated with colleagues at Cornell University in New York and Recherche de l’Institut Paul Bocuse in France to see what consumers in each country knew about the food they eat and how their knowledge affected weight.
At 35 per cent, the obesity rate in the United States is three times higher than France’s 12 per cent, Quebec author Dr. Maurice Doyon notes.
In Canada, adults with a body mass index of 30 or more – a marker of obesity – sits at 23.1 per cent and is steadily rising.
Doyon and his peers asked hundreds of French, American and Quebec residents to answer a questionnaire that tested if they knew how much fat was in servings of whole milk, butter, margarine and vegetable oils.
Turns out, weighty Americans were most likely to get the answers right, followed by Quebecers. In most cases, the French couldn’t even muster a guess – 43 per cent of the time, they admitted to not knowing the answer.
Canadian respondents said they didn’t know to 13 per cent of the questions and Americans gave up only four per cent of the time.
The French also didn’t know what the nation’s recommendations were regarding saturated and unsaturated fats in their diets.
“The difference among respondents’ knowledge essentially indicates that the French don’t take much of an interest in the nutrients contained in the foods they eat. The information is on the package, but they don’t read it,” Doyon said in a statement.
This is in stark contrast to North America, where companies have been pressured into disclosing what’s in their products on food labels to encourage wiser decision making in grocery stores.
Doyon told Global News that the findings suggest that obsessing over nutritional information may not be the best strategy for healthy eating.
“Too much focus is not desirable, in my opinion. We should see food as a whole and not just see the components,” he said.
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Still, Doyon noted that France is on the same trajectory as North America when it comes to the trend of gaining weight. It’s just that the European nation is about 10 years or so behind us, he said.
Other factors are at play: the ingredient list of prepared meals in France is much shorter than the meals we eat in North America, Doyon said, pointing to frozen lasagna as an example – it’s likely a staple in most American freezers.
“(The French) are willing to pay for quality, and they see food as a cultural thing, something enjoyable and they have what I would call the big picture of what is an equilibrated meal,” he said.
“The opposite would be something that I have observed in the United States, where young girls would skip breakfast in order to have a bag of chips during lunch, all based on calorie counts.”
Doyon is an agricultural economics professor with a background in studying consumer behaviour, value and market design. He said his next steps will examine consumers’ behaviour when they purchase food.
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