By: Coach Leah
If you’ve driven down Veteran’s Parkway in Bloomington, IL recently, you may have noticed a certain company’s billboard comparing the protein content of one of their bagels to that of eggs. This billboard proudly touts their bagel has more and leaves the consumer potentially questioning their breakfast choice. While this billboard is a great marketing tool by the company, it is also very misleading if taken at face value. **Pssst….that’s what they want**
Now, they’re not entirely wrong. One 9-Grain bagel DOES have more protein than 2 eggs (13g vs 12g). So, if that’s the case, then what makes this advertisement, and many others like it, so deceiving? After all, it sounds like the bagel might actually be MORE healthy than the eggs (cha-ching)!
Let’s take a deeper look at each of those foods.
The macronutrient breakdown for 2 eggs is simple; 12g Protein, 10g Fat, 0g Carbs for a total of 140 calories. It also has only one ingredient: eggs.
Now let’s take a look at that bagel……
The 9 grain bagel has 13g of Protein, 4g of Fat (without cream cheese or butter), and a whopping 51g of carbs. There are also 8g of Sugar in there. How about the ingredients? I mean, it’s got 9 grains so it has to be healthy, right? Wrong. This specific bagel has 36 ingredients in it including 4 different kinds of sugar (honey, sugar, dextrose, and brown sugar) and 440mg of Sodium. The total calorie count on this bad boy comes to 280 (again, without cream cheese or other spread).
Wow! That’s a lot of information that was missing, right? Right. The truth is, it’s missing for a reason. The food business is a multi billion dollar industry and these companies have one thing on their agenda: to make more money. Advertisements like the example above are meant to get us to buy their products by making them seem appealing in some way.
When it comes to food, we have to be our own advocate. So the next time you’re at the grocery store doing your weekly shopping or find yourself questioning if that sandwich from the fast food joint really meets your protein requirement for the day, dig deeper. Do some research on the products you’re buying. Look at the nutrition label and, maybe more importantly, the ingredient list before making your purchase. Otherwise, you may never know….the rest of the story.
