Low-fat diet: When “lite” isn’t right

Supermarket shelves are full of  “low-fat”, “light” or “lite” products these days - everything from biscuits to bread, from cheese to crisps. If your aim is to create a low-fat diet to keep cholesterol levels down, “light” and “lite” doesn’t necessarily mean low fat, and “low fat” won’t necessarily keep your weight down.

In fact, health experts warn that foods with these labels may cause more problems than they purport to solve.

“Low fat” vs “light” or “lite”

The Food Standards Agency is responsible for overseeing labelling on food products and is working on making labelling easier to understand. To use the term “light” or “lite” the product must have at least 30% less of a particular value - such as calories or fat - than a standard product, and the manufacturer needs to explain on the label precisely what their claim means, for example “light - 30% less fat”. The problem is that just because it has less fat, it doesn’t mean it’s low in fat.

For a product to use "low-fat" on its label, there must be less than 3g of fat per 100g. The problem is that sometimes low-fat foods are also bland. To make up for that lack of taste, food manufacturers tend to pour other ingredients - especially sugar, flour, thickeners and salt - into the products. That may boost the calorie content.

If the foods aren't that appealing, they may also lead to overeating to make up for the lack of satisfaction.

Not low fat, but good fat

So how do you follow a low-fat diet? Recent studies have shown that the main health culprit may not be the amount of total fat in your diet.

In fact, the eight-year Women's Health Initiative Dietary Modification Trial, published in 2006, found that women who ate low-fat diets and those who didn't had nearly identical rates of heart attacks, strokes and other forms of cardiovascular disease. Other studies have found no link between high-fat diets and other diseases, including cancer and weight gain.

Instead, it's the type of fats you eat that seems to matter most.

Today, nutritionists speak in terms of “good fat” and “bad fat.” Keeping the amount of fat in your diet down is still important, but what's most important is that you're eating the right kind of heart-healthy fats.

"Good" fats include the unsaturated fats: both monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Monounsaturated fats (such as rapeseed and olive oils) are those that have been found to lower the "bad cholesterol" (low-density lipoprotein or LDL) in the bloodstream and raise the amount of "good cholesterol" (high-density lipoprotein or HDL). LDL cholesterol is linked to atherosclerosis and heart disease. HDL appears to actually clear the "bad" types of cholesterol from the blood. Polyunsaturated fats (as in fatty fish such as tuna and salmon) simply help lower LDL cholesterol.