Special Reports

Not since the TV-cartoon heyday of Fred Flintsones modern Stone Age family have cavemen been so in vogue. The Paleo Diet, a book by Loren Cordain, PhD, has been a bestseller since it was first published in 2002, and it has spawned a pile of cookbooks and a glossy magazine devoted to modern day primal living. A Google search for Paleo diet retrieves 7.7 million hits. Actor Chris Pratt credits the Paleo diet for getting him in shape to star as the buff hero in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

Reduced sodium or low sodium-The term reduced means a product has 25% less sodium than the same food with a normal amount, so a reduced sodium choice is better than a conventional one. But even reduced sodium foods may be higher in sodium than those labeled low sodium, which can contain no more than 140 milligrams per serving. A reduced sodium can of beans, for example, should contain 25% less than the 311 milligrams of sodium found in a serving-233 milligrams, more than the low sodium limit. Check the Nutrition Facts panel to see what youre really getting.

The USDA has specific rules governing the use of familiar terms such as fresh and free range when labeling meat and poultry products:

A trip to the supermarket can feel like running a gauntlet of buzzwords. This product promises its reduced sodium, while that one is natural and gluten-free. Is a food made with extra fiber better than excellent source of fiber, or vice versa? Just how low in calories does a food have to be to boast that its low-calorie-and should you pick that label over one thats lower calorie or light?

The yogurt aisle presents a dizzying array of choices. Nonfat to low-fat to cream-top. Greek-style, Icelandic or Australian. Cows milk, goats milk or no dairy milk at all.

Americans consume more than $7 billion a year worth of yogurt, with hundreds of new yogurt products introduced annually. In survey after survey, consumers say the healthfulness of yogurt is top among the reasons they eat it.

Surveys have shown that a large majority of Americans are confident in the safety, quality and effectiveness of products marketed as dietary supplements (a term derived from a 1994 law that questionably grouped drug-type herbal and botanical extracts with essential vitamins and minerals). So many were shocked at the recent news that four out of five popular herbal remedies sold at some of the nations leading retailers didnt contain any of the promised ingredients. The investigation by the New York State attorney generals office charged GNC, Target, Walgreens and Walmart with selling fraudulent and potentially dangerous products and demanded the products be yanked from store shelves.

Take a look in your pantry. Do you see whole-grain pasta? Does the label on your bread say 100% whole wheat? (Are you sure? Dont be fooled by terms like multigrain.) Is your breakfast cereal made with whole grains?We are very fortunate these days-for almost any type of baked product there is a whole-grain option that one can choose in place of the refined-grain option, says Alice H. Lichtenstein, DSc, director of Tufts HNRCA Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory. Just be careful; dont try to judge whether something is made from whole grain by its color. It is important to read the label the first time, just to make certain. Some light-colored products are made with white whole grains and some dark-colored products are not and just appear so because caramel or other coloring was added.

Whole grains or foods made from them contain the entire grain seed-all the parts in their original proportions, including the naturally occurring nutrients. According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, if the grain has been cracked, crushed or flaked, a food must retain the same relative proportions as they exist in the intact grain to be called a whole grain. This means that 100% of the original grain-all of the bran, germ and endosperm-must be present to qualify as a whole grain. Refined grains retain only the endosperm portion of the original seed.

Although whole grains are generally a good source of fiber, they are far from the only way to boost your fiber intake. Other high-fiber foods include: