Meal replacement food has many loopholes
Our reporter Yan Sheng
We often say: If you don’t lose weight in March, you will be sad in April.
As summer approaches, fast weight loss has become a top priority for many people, and it is difficult to keep your mouth shut and open your legs, so meal replacement foods have become a good choice.
So, can meal replacement foods really make us “lie down”?
Recently, Jiangsu market supervision WeChat official account issued a notice that the current meal replacement food lacks national mandatory standards, which leads to the inevitable problems of uneven product quality, excessive marketing, and false publicity in the meal replacement food industry. . In actual consumption, the effects are also different, and it cannot be eaten for a long time.
Generation
Meals
Food
Products
No mandatory national standards yet
On major e-commerce platforms, there are a wide variety of meal replacement foods with various prices ranging from a few yuan to several hundred yuan. There are various types of meal replacement shakes, meal replacement cereals, vegetable meal replacement soups, multi-grain protein biscuits, meal replacement chicken breasts, and more. Product introductions include sucrose-free, fat-free, satiety, nutrition, challenge 30kg for 7 days, etc. Some meal replacement products are selling well.
Meal replacements, also known as meal replacements, are foods that replace part or all of a meal, as the name suggests. At first, it was for patients, such as some people who were unable to eat normally before and after surgery and needed nutritional support, or those who had difficulty chewing and swallowing.
Currently the mainstream meal replacement foods on the market include meal replacement powder, meal replacement milkshake, meal replacement porridge, meal replacement snacks, protein bars, etc. Such products are often marked with keywords such as convenience, low-fat, and slimming when they are promoted.
But it is understood that there is no clear mandatory national standard for meal replacement food, only the “Meal Replacement Food Group Standard” issued by the Chinese Nutrition Society can be used for reference. This is only given by the Nutrition Society. guidance. Professor Yang Yuexin from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention once said that the meal replacement food market in my country has problems such as unbalanced product nutrition, unscientific formula, uneven quality, irregular use method, and exaggerated publicity. One of the reasons is that there is a lack of national standards for meal replacement foods, and there is no product category for meal replacement foods. It is urgent for all parties to work together to promote the establishment and development of relevant national standards.
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Meals
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Long-term consumption can lead to malnutrition
Many consumers are concerned about whether meal replacements can achieve healthy weight loss. The Jiangsu market supervision department reminded that meal replacements are only a “tool” in the process of fat reduction, not simply using meal replacements as a substitute. . In addition, each meal replacement variety has different contents of nutrients such as vitamins, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, etc., long-term single consumption of the same meal replacement is likely to cause malnutrition. Meal replacement foods cannot completely replace ordinary foods to meet the nutritional needs of the body.
Most meal replacement foods can only maintain the most basic and necessary nutrients needed by the human body, while other diversified nutritional needs are difficult to meet. Sun Guiju, a member of the Special Committee of the Jiangsu Provincial Food Safety Committee and a doctoral tutor at the School of Public Health of Southeast University, also said in an interview with the media that the consumption of meal replacement food is for the purpose of weight control. . Because some products on the market are low in energy, they are not fortified with nutrients, so the content of nutrients is low, which will cause a lack of dietary nutrients. It is recommended that when the weight reaches a certain ideal range, you should resume a normal diet, properly control energy and increase exercise, eat more dietary fiber, and achieve energy balance in order to maintain a healthy weight.
In addition, many meal replacements today do not use sucralose, but instead use sucralose. Zhu Yi, an associate professor at the School of Food Science of China Agricultural University, once introduced that sucralose is an artificial sugar substitute. So far, the scientific community has not reached a consensus on the health risks of sugar substitutes, but clinical observations have found that long-term consumption of sucralose has an impact on insulin sensitivity. . People with diabetes are discouraged from taking artificial sugar substitutes for a long time, so sugar-free is not necessarily healthy.
Actually, the most scientific way to lose weight is to keep your mouth shut, open your legs, and control your diet while doing appropriate exercise to maintain a balanced diet.
General
Pass
Minus
Fat
person
Group
No need for meal replacements
Obesity occurs in addition to the general population,
Pregnant women, the elderly, children and people with chronic diseases
both may be overweight and obeseFat problem,
So, is meal replacement suitable for everyone?
Sun Guiju said that meal replacements are mainly aimed at overweight and obese people. In fact, there is no need for ordinary fat-reducing people to use meal replacements. Appropriate control of diet and exercise is the healthiest. Meal replacement foods are not recommended for pregnant women, lactating women, infants, children, the sick and the elderly. In addition, meal replacement foods are generally high in dietary fiber, and are not suitable for people with gastrointestinal disorders and digestive insufficiency.
Meal replacement foods mentioned above cannot be eaten for a long time,
So, how long can meal replacements be eaten continuously?
Dr. Wang Zhengyuan from the Shanghai Center for Disease Control and Prevention also introduced that meal replacement foods are specially processed and formulated to meet the nutritional needs of adults with one or two meals during weight control. It is an energy-controlling food meal with low energy and sufficient protein, minerals, vitamins and dietary fiber. However, there are also some “congenital deficiencies” in the seemingly omnipotent meal replacement food. For example, iodine is not an ingredient that must be added to meal replacement foods. Long-term consumption of meal replacements will cause iodine deficiency in the human body. For this reason, it is recommended that continuous consumption of meal replacement food should not exceed two months.
If you do want to buy meal replacements, make sure you choose the right one. Sun Guiju suggested that you should pay attention to choosing big brands, especially the content of food labels.
One is to look at the composition of the formula;
The second is to look at the nutrient content table, and give preference to products with more ingredients and higher content of major nutrients such as B vitamins, iron, zinc, calcium, etc. It is recommended to refer to the release of the Chinese Nutrition Society. The Meal Replacement Food Group Standard. It should be noted that if the purchased product is a health food approved by the state and has a weight loss function with a blue cap, you must choose to take it according to its product instructions and labels.
In addition, taking into account the principle of food diversity, you can eat some low-energy foods such as fruits and vegetables during meal replacements, and in order to gain a sense of well-being, chewing function and gastrointestinal function can be positively guided. At the same time, it is also good for health.
The pictures in the text are from the Internet
Edit || Yan Sheng Wan Tao
Director on duty || Fan Hongbo