Diet food

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Diet food (or dietetic food) refers to any food or drink whose recipe has been altered in some way to make it part of a body modification diet. Although the usual intention is weight loss, sometimes the intention is to aid in gaining weight or muscle as in bodybuilding supplements.

Contents 1 Terminology 2 Process 3 Controversy 4 See also

[edit] Terminology

In addition to Diet other words or phrases are used to identify and describe these foods including Light or Lite, Low Calorie, Low Fat, No Fat, Fat Free, No Sugar, Sugar free, and Zero Calorie. In some areas use of these terms may be regulated by law. For example in the U.S. a product labelled low fat must not contain more than 3 grams of fat per serving; and to be labelled fat free it must contain less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving.[1]

[edit] Process

The process of making a diet version of a food usually requires finding an acceptable low calorie substitute for some high calorie ingredient. This can be as simple as replacing some or all of the food's sugar with a sugar substitute as is common with diet soft drinks such as Coca-Cola. In some snacks, the food may be baked instead of fried thus reducing the calories. In other cases, low fat ingredients may be used as replacements.

[edit] Controversy

Controversy surrounding diet foods is based around the possibility that the products used to replace sugar are more harmful than sugar itself.^{[citation needed]} Also with low fat foods, the fat is often replaced with sugar, and the reduction in calorific value is small, if there is any.

[edit] See also

• Low-carbohydrate diet
• Calorie