Using social media platforms daily, many of us get nutritional information, advice and recipes from people we follow. This advice can come from a range of different people, such as health professionals, celebrities or even friends sharing photos of what they’ve cooked. However, when it comes to nutritional advice or information, it’s important to get this from qualified dietitians and nutritionists.
Recipes posted online from the general population may offer ideas and inspiration and this is great. However, we’re seeing more and more viral recipes that are perceived as “healthy” but may not actually be, depending on the ingredients used – let’s look at baked oats as an example.
Typically, many of the recipes for baked oats on social channels have lots of ingredients in them, such as maple or golden syrup, chocolate or cocoa nibs, cow’s milk or almond milk, peanut or almond butter, coconut oil and salt.
Often seen (and sold as) “health foods”, ingredients such as nut butters, cocoa nibs and coconut oil are used frequently by people who thing they are making healthy choices and therefore are not conscious of the quantities used, because these foods are perceived as healthy. However, a lot of these ingredients contain high amounts of sugar or fat and, therefore, high amounts of calories.
This is where reading and understanding food labels is beneficial when buying products, and we have a quick guide on how to do this here or the Irish Heart Foundation has a useful graphic here. By law, food products must contain information on the nutritional values of products. This is often displayed per 100g – not only per total of the package or per serving of the item, which can be confusing for many of us.
In terms of sugar, a general rule is:
High means over 22.5g per 100g serving
Low means fewer than 5g per 100g serving
A checklist for a nutritionally balanced meal is to ensure there are sources of protein, high-fibre carbohydrates, calcium, micronutrients (vitamins & minerals), and a limited amount of sugar and salt.
Let’s take baked oats as an example:
Protein: cow’s milk, soy milk, egg, or hemp seeds
High-fibre carbohydrate: oats
Calcium: milk or fortified plant-based alternative mylk
Micronutrients: seeds, fruit
Limited salt and sugar: small amount of nut butter
So, as a takeaway, it’s important to:
Be mindful of who you are getting your nutritional information from.
Ensure that recipes are nutritionally balanced using the above checklist.
Learn to read food labels, which can help you make informative choices when it comes to buying ingredients for recipes.
References
- Ramachandran, D., Kite, J., Vassallo, A., Chau, J., Partridge, S., Freeman, B. and Gill, T., 2018. Food Trends and Popular Nutrition Advice Online – Implications for Public Health. Online Journal of Public Health Informatics, 10(2).