Made or you: some of the newest food products specifically target women's nutrient needs. Do they measure up?

Muscle & Fitness/Hers, April-May, 2002 by Beth Sonnenburg

"Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!" Not for men, not for women, not for seniors and especially not for rabbits, instructs the still-popular commercial that happily abandons whole segments of the consumer market in favor of appealing directly to kids.

Marketing foods to children is hardly new -- just switch on Saturday morning cartoons if you want to be bombarded with commercials for Dinosaur Eggs oatmeal, Wacky Gel and EZ Squirt Funky Purple ketchup. Obviously, kids are not concerned with vitamins and minerals as they traipse down the grocery store aisles.

But women are. And a whole new category of foods for women has recently emerged, touting calcium, soy, antioxidants and folic acid on their boxes just as children's cereals tout big green frogs. Some of these products truly do offer nutrients and macronutrient profiles desirable for women's health and wellness; others don't rise much above the level of a marketing ploy. Here's how to separate fact from fiction and determine whether these products deserve a spot in your kitchen cupboard.

edible extras

"I think these products that are targeted toward women are actually targeting the nutrients that women tend to underconsume, such as calcium, If you're not taking a multivitamin, at times these can be low in the diet," says Roberta Clarke, MS, RD, Chicago-based nutritionist and CEO of figurefacts.com, which provides a Palm OS-based nutrition program for portable digital assistants. Indeed, most of these female-friendly products are fortified with some or all of the following: soy, calcium, iron, folate, other B vitamins, Vitamin D and flaxseed.

Though Clarke certainly isn't opposed to fortification of foods, she is concerned that some women don't fully understand what they're taking in. She recommends that instead of blindly consuming fortified products, women should evaluate their diets to see what they're already getting and what their diets lack. In some cases, it can be dangerous to go overboard on nutrients: The fat-soluble vitamins A and D can be toxic if consumed in excess. (See "Alphabet Soup" on page 141 for the benefits and recommended intake of some of the nutrients listed above.)

For example, I know I don't get enough calcium so I buy calcium-fortified cereal and orange juice, but I don't stay up nights worrying about my Vitamin B6 intake. "Calcium is the best reason to buy women's foods," notes Bonnie Liebman in the Center for Science in the Public Interest's (CSPI) Nutrition Action Healthletter.

soy story

Almost all female-friendly products include soy, but not necessarily enough to make a dent in your daily isollavone intake. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved health claim for soy requires 25 grams a day -- but that's for reduced risk of heart disease, not any of the other health benefits associated with soy. "As a general rule I don't think 25 grams per day is necessary, because the evidence suggests that less than this amount is sufficient for many of the proposed benefits," states Mark Messina, PhD, associate professor of nutrition at Loma Linds University in California. "For example, many studies suggest that 1-2 servings a day may be good for your bones and may reduce prostate cancer risk for men. I recommend 10-15 grams per day -- then you're talking about two servings of these kinds of foods, and that's a very modest amount."

The CSPI also questions the practicality of the FDA's health claim. "You'd need about 25 grams of soy a day to lower your cholesterol, although the government generously allows heart disease claims on foods with as few as 6 grams per serving. (The Feds bowed to the food industry's absurd argument that people would eat four servings a day.)"

Messina explains: "I do think soy is a special food because it contains isoflavones and you really can't get those from any other food. I think these user-friendly products are really good because if you're a very traditional eater, you might easily be convinced to try a soy cereal because cereal is a familiar food, whereas something like tofu requires some lmowledge of preparation." He believes the soy cereals are an important step in breaking the psychological barrier against eating soy.

The tricky part comes in selecting a product with enough soy to make it matter Two cereals profiled on page 117 have only 2 grams of soy per serving, so you'd have to eat five servings to reach your 10-gram total. Better choices are soy-fortified products containing about 5 grams or more soy per serving. (If the label doesn't list the grams of soy, use this rule of thumb: The farther down on the ingredient list, the less soy is in the product.)

whole in one

A food fortified with vitamins and minerals isn't necessarily healthier than a non-fortified food. To illustrate, we've compared one serving of two oatmeal products, below.

             OLD-FASHIONED OATS  NUTRITION FOR WOMEN

Calories            150                  170
Fat (g)              3                    2
Carbs (g)            27                  33
Sugar (g)            1                   13
Fiber (g)            4                    3
Protein (g)          5                    5