“Industrial pastries are bad, without nuances. All of them.” Antonio Rodríguez, author of The Book of Sinazucar.org (Pluma de Cristal) and creator of the Carmen IA app, a food barcode scanner that explains in an entertaining and informative way the nutritional properties of each product, is this forceful. analyzed. “The only nuance that could be introduced about industrial pastries is the frequency of consumption: nothing will happen if you eat them occasionally, because it is true that it is not healthy, but it is not toxic either.”
The doctor and nutritionist Núria Monfulleda, from the Loveyourself center in Barcelona, ??has the same opinion, recalling that, “industrial pastries are not healthy nor can they be recommended in any diet, without exceptions. This means that there is no such thing as a good industrial pastry and another bad, no matter how much some cookies with fiber try to make us believe otherwise. But we cannot say that it is toxic either: toxic would be drinking car oil. So if it is consumed occasionally nothing is going to happen, although as a nutritionist, obviously, it will never “The consumption of industrial pastries should be recommended as part of a healthy diet.”
In this sense, Rodríguez appeals to common sense. “Is it necessary to give up eating a piece of cake on our birthday? Each person has an answer. For me, the ideal is to build a healthy relationship with both industrial pastries and other ultra-processed pastries, which means that they should consume without guilt very occasionally. The reason is that, in general terms and although there are nuances that, in the end, do not end up making a difference, “pastries are still a combination of refined flour (which means that the good part is taken away, which is the fiber), sugar and unhealthy fats, such as palm fat. This mixture is not at all good for health and some details such as the fact that instead of palm fat, let’s say sunflower oil, do not change either substantially the whole”.
In Spain, the consumption of this type of ultra-processed foods is increasing. According to data from the Spanish Association of the Bakery, Pastry and Pastry Industry (ASEMAC), production in 2022 reached a volume of 203,858 thousand kg, which represents an increase of 9.01% compared to 2021. This organization In 2017, it joined the Collaboration Plan for the Improvement of the Composition of Foods and Beverages and other measures, promoted by the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) with the aim of reducing the content of sugars, fats and salt of certain food and drinks. For Rodríguez, the industry’s efforts are not only insufficient, but can even be counterproductive: “Many people tend to consume more products that advertise that they are low in salt or sugar or that they do not contain palm fat, believing that are healthier than the rest. And the truth is that no matter how much work has been done on their reformulation, they are still not recommended.”
Despite what many consider, cookies are industrial pastries and must be treated the same as buns, Neapolitans and palm trees. While it is true that we find cookies that contain fiber, others made with whole wheat flour, with sunflower oil or without added sugar (which usually means that they contain sweeteners), the difference between them is not substantial. “It is true that if we study the labels in detail, some cookies have a better composition,” says Rodríguez, “but it is not significant. What is better, jumping off the 16th floor or the 18th?” Carmen IA herself defines a well-known brand of cookies that we have scanned as “a runaway train towards the country of ultra-processed foods and added sugar” and adds that “with 68% sugar, this product takes us directly to the country of hyperpalatability.” “.
In fact, it should be noted that replacing refined sugar with other sweeteners is not a panacea either. “The only thing we achieve with this gesture is that the palate becomes accustomed to the sweet flavor, from which it is very difficult to disengage, and our objective for a healthy diet must be the opposite: to abandon sweet flavors to accustom the palate to the original taste of food,” explains Monfulleda, for his part, who recalls that “we are not doing ourselves any favors by choosing sweetened products.”
According to Rodríguez, “many people eat cookies for breakfast every day that are advertised as digestive or with high fiber content, thinking that they are healthy, without knowing that they contain large amounts of sugar and unhealthy fats. Thus, while conventional cookies do reserve For special occasions or to eat in small quantities, in many homes the ban on digestive foods is opened thinking that they are healthy. It is a mistake,” explains the creator of Carmen IA. For a good breakfast, Monfulleda is clear: “a whole wheat bread with oil and tomato, some protein to taste, whether egg, tuna or ham, and some healthy fat like avocado, for example.”
In this section we must take into account that some cereal brands “cheat on the Nutriscore”, in Rodríguez’s words, which means that we take them home happy to consume a product with an A without being aware of the tricks involved. used to achieve this good score.
Nutriscore is a front labeling system aimed at providing users with clear nutritional information. “It is like a nutritional traffic light: it is a classification system of 5 letters and colors, in which dark green A is the healthiest option and red E is the worst, passing through B, C and D,” he explains. the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU).
It must be taken into account that Nutriscore always scores foods from the same family based on an algorithm developed in 2005 by scientists at the University of Oxford, so that “an A does not necessarily mean that the product is healthy, but that within the group to which it belongs is the one with the best composition,” explains Miguel Ángel Lurueña, doctor in Food Science and Technology and author of the blog Gominolas de Petróleo and the book Que no te líen con la food (Destino, 2021), a guide that It teaches, among other things, how to combat misinformation regarding food.
Lurueña explains that since the appearance of this labeling “manufacturers do not stop finding ways to obtain a favorable Nutriscore score”, which is achieved by making small modifications to the composition of the food. Breakfast cereals aimed at children are a good example of this. “The system establishes that there are elements that score negatively. They are calories, sugars, saturated fats and salt. Those that score positively are fruits and vegetables, fiber, proteins and nuts,” explains the creator of Petroleum Gummies. This means that some brands “add some fiber, remove sugar bordering on the limits of the algorithm and make us believe that they are healthy because they have an A in Nutriscore,” notes Rodríguez. In this sense, Lurueña recalls that “the creators of Nutriscore themselves had to clarify that an A does not necessarily mean that the product is healthy, but rather that within the group to which it belongs it is the one with the best composition.”
For Rodríguez, when it comes to cereals there is an exception: unsweetened oat flakes or corn. “It is true that many people find it difficult because the sweetness is altered, but the good news is that we can reduce the sweetness threshold if we gradually remove added sugar from foods,” recalls the creator of Sinazucar.org, a portal that was created with the aim of revealing the amount of sugar hidden in numerous commonly consumed foods.
Another bad news for lovers of this type of ultra-processed foods, who usually read labels in search of a lower percentage of saturated fat or sugar, or even in search of fiber or whole wheat flour, is that bakery products are not substantially better either. . Rodríguez explains: “The pastries we buy at the bakery are not better than those purchased at the supermarket. They probably do not contain preservatives and stabilizers, but that does not make them healthier.” Rodríguez recalls that the bad thing about pastries is the high content of fats, sugars and poor quality flour, not the additives that they may occasionally contain, all of which are approved by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
“The demonization of additives is called chemophobia, since those that are approved by the EFSA are harmless. Therefore, a croissant that we buy in a bakery is just as bad as the one in the supermarket.” Could exceptions be made for those newly minted artisanal bakeries that work with quality ingredients and sourdoughs? “A priori, they continue to be pieces that are not recommended within the framework of a healthy diet, because they are mostly composed of fats, sugars and refined flours,” explains Rodríguez, who insists that “if you are going to eat pastries purely occasionally, take the one you like. Enjoy it, don’t feel guilty and then continue eating healthy,” says the popularizer.
Let everyone name them whatever they want, because each person has their favorites. They are those hyperpalatable guilty pleasures with bright and eye-catching packaging that have historically seduced us based on fats and sugars, but also with their stickers and other marketing strategies. All of them are a mixture of refined flour, added sugar, vegetable fat, defatted cocoa, lactose, stabilizers and emulsifiers, and they contain a large amount of calories.
Therefore, it is best to look for other alternatives when the palate asks for a sweet pleasure. The bad news is that homemade cakes are not the best option either. “The ideal is to eliminate these types of products from the diet and leave them for special occasions, whether they are homemade or industrial. The classic yogurt cake that we eat thinking it is healthy still contains refined flour and sugar, so it is not It is recommended for regular consumption,” concludes Rodríguez.
