Biscuits are between love and dislove

Looking around the big supermarkets, almost every supermarket has a whole row of shelves full of all kinds of biscuits. It's amazing that there are so many kinds of biscuits, such as beautiful shapes, dazzling packaging and so on. Biscuits are becoming a hot food in our eyes. Sometimes when you are too busy to eat, when you are hungry, you have a biscuit to fill your hunger, while some fashionable women never touch the staple food in order to keep fit. Fruit and biscuits are just a meal.

 

It is precisely because of this need of diners, oat biscuits, Coix biscuits, calcium and iron biscuits, yogurt biscuits and other biscuits have appeared in the market, playing a health card, so that consumers have reason to believe that eating more biscuits can not only meet the nutritional needs but also not gain weight. Why not?

 

Nutrition of biscuits

 

At present, the mainstream of biscuit production is to pursue a good taste. Some biscuit advertisements emphasize eating more when it's tasty, but they don't say eating more when it's nutritious.

 

At present, most of the biscuits sold in supermarkets are listed in the nutrition table on the package, indicating the nutritional content of the product. Smart consumers should learn to use this table. Taking a pack of calcium-fortified sweet biscuits as an example, the nutrient composition table lists the contents of five components, including 468 kilocalories of energy, 8.3 grams of protein, 17 grams of fat, 70 grams of carbohydrates and 365 mg of calcium per 100 grams of biscuits.  According to the energy supply ratio of the three nutrients, the fat content is higher and the protein is insufficient. Only calcium can meet 30% of the daily demand after fortification. In addition, vitamins, dietary fiber and other equally important nutrients did not appear. Therefore, replacing a meal with a pack of biscuits does not provide adequate balanced nutrition for the body, except for energy, inadequate protein and a portion of calcium.

 

Substitution for Weight Losers

 

Since biscuits don't provide enough nutrition, can they be used as a diet? From the point of view of energy, it is clear. The energy content of biscuits is about 468 kilocalories per 100 grams, while the same amount of rice is only 114 kilocalories, which is four times as much as rice. Where does so much energy come from? Low-gluten wheat flour, a lot of oil, they make biscuits have a soft and crisp taste, although the surface does not look greasy, but it contains 17% fat, no matter what other nutrients are added, it can only be considered as a low nutrient density food.  Using biscuits instead of dinner diet to lose weight is no different from seeking fish from trees.

 

How to Identify Nutritional Components

 

When choosing biscuits, would you carefully check the ingredients and nutritional ingredients on the package? According to the survey, the vast majority of consumers do not read the product information on the packaging at all, and less than 20% of them pay attention to the ingredient list and nutrition information, and less than a quarter of them can understand. This makes consumers vulnerable to the impact of promotion and advertising, can not really understand the quality of products.

 

To choose a better variety of biscuits, we should first learn to look at the nutritional information on the packaging.

 

Look at the fat content. Although biscuits are generally high in fat content, we still need to choose a lower variety. According to the fat function ratio, the fat content per 100 grams of biscuits should be at least less than 16 grams. To know the fat content intuitively, wrap the biscuit in a paper towel and press it tightly. After half an hour, observe how much oil seeps into the paper. The more oil leaked out, the higher the fat content of biscuits. If you don't feel greasy and exudate a lot of oil, it means that the saturation of oil is very high, long-term consumption is not conducive to health.

 

Look at the type of fat. In order to increase the crispness of biscuits, a large amount of oil is usually added. Common vegetable oils are better in all kinds of oils, but animal oils such as butter and butter are worse than vegetable oils because of their higher saturated fatty acids. The common terms "shortening", "vegetable butter" and "hydrogenated vegetable oil" mean more unhealthy because they contain trans fatty acids. Although the use of such oils and fats in processed foods can make the taste of products more crisp, a large number of studies have proved that trans fatty acids intake is harmful to human health. Many foreign cities have banned the addition of trans fatty acids in food.

 

Look at the amount and type of additives. In general, biscuits will be added with a variety of ingredients, such as bulking agents, sweeteners, emulsifiers, etc. Although the use of prescribed doses will not affect health, but a large number of food containing additives is not a wise choice. Especially in sandwich cookies, the "heart" is seldom added to raw materials such as juice or milk. In order to achieve the desired flavor and color, a variety of flavors and pigments are used. Although additives are not necessarily harmful, at least they will not achieve the desired nutritional effect.

 

Look at the kinds of raw materials. Biscuits are usually made of refined wheat flour with low nutritional value. If other coarse grains, legumes or vegetables are added to the ingredients, their nutritional value will be improved. But it is not enough to look only at the propaganda on packaging. We should learn to observe the ranking order of various raw materials on the ingredient list: the larger the usage, the higher the ranking. If the product is labeled as "containing vegetables", but the vegetables in the ingredient list even rank behind the food additives such as salt, it shows that the nutritional effect is not significant if the additives are very little.

 

Of course, biscuits are not useless as non-staple food. At present, there are many recipes for biscuits on the market, the most common is to add calcium or vitamins to biscuits, and some are all added.