What you see and what you get

A while back I attended a meeting of a very prestigious Canadian nutrition organization and when lunch was served I noted that the only beverages offered (other than tea and coffee) were juice and water. I noted it simply because breakfast had also been a milkless affair and one of the two food groups that Canadians routinely under-consume is the milk/milk product group...small wonder when even a nutrition organization doesn't include it in its menus. Anyway, having had my quota of fruit juice for the day, I opted for the bottled water thinking as I did, how amazed my young-dietitian self would have been to be told that someday people would actually pay for water in a bottle. Never mind how trendy and cool it would be to be seen carrying the stuff around in all manner of places.

So, you can imagine my surprise when, on lifting the glass to my lips, I discover I'm not drinking water at all...I'm drinking pop! I quickly check the ingredient list and sure enough there it is, all the regular stuff that's in regular pop (soda to those south of the border). You know: carbonated water, various forms of sugar, sodium benzoate, citric acid...the usual. So how was I fooled into thinking it was water? As far as I can tell, by one way only: the shape of the bottle. It looked like the bottles that the fizzy waters come in and I hadn't checked the label for the actual name of the product. So I quickly looked to see how this particular beverage was identified, mindful of the fact that a can of cola doesn't actually say 'pop' or 'soda' on the label...some products need no introduction. But this stuff did identify itself...it was a (are you ready?) sparkling 'refresher'.

What a relief to parents who might feel guilty about giving their kids pop with meals instead of milk or juice. They're not...they're giving them a 'refresher'. What a con! And speaking of con jobs, the same nutritional slight-of-hand is occurring as I mentioned yesterday, when the term 'vegetable oil shortening' is used instead of 'hydrogenated vegetable oil'.

Speaking of beverages reminds me of the time, way back when, a Minister of Agriculture declared that Canadians should stop relying on orange juice for their vitamin C and get it instead from Canadian grape juice instead. Great move, especially if a large proportion of one's constituency is in the southern Ontario grape belt, but a tad off the mark. Grape juice has virtually no vitamin C, unless the bottler decides to add it, but at the time I had no end of clients telling me that they were getting their vitamin C from grapes because of what the Minister had said.

It's hard to know what to believe about nutrition these days. When in doubt, read the label...then ask a registered dietitian.