This site is the website of motivational speaker Craig Harper. A constantly updated, one-stop information, inspiration, education and motivation station. Unlike many similar sites, it is a totally free resource for anyone who is serious about moving from mediocre to amazing in any area of their personal or professional life. With hundreds of articles covering a wide range of subject matter, great interviews with cool people and inspirational video posts, there's more than enough brain-food to keep you busy for hours. Okay, days!! Enjoy.
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Craig Harper is Australia's leading
motivational speaker
and educator (according to Google Australia). He is a highly
sought-after corporate coach and is considered to be
a leader and pioneer in the areas of personal and
professional development.
Working with hundreds of
teams, companies and a wide variety of organisations
on numerous continents over the last twenty years
has given Craig a unique insight into, and
understanding of, human performance and all its
variables. Craig has an ability to educate, inspire,
challenge and make people laugh all at the same
time!
Well, the entertainer, the creative writer and the motivator are on holidays, so the educator bloke has turned up for work this morning. I might actually make you think today, so get ready.
I'm always being asked for my opinion on a range of products; books, supplements, programs, exercise equipment and lately for some strange reason, frozen low-fat meals. Now, you and I both know that many products aren't exactly what their companies make them out to be, especially when it comes to food products and supplements. Of course not, it's their job to sell as much stuff as possible and increase their bottom line, and it's your job to figure out exactly what you're buying and in this case, putting into your body. These companies don't care about your physical health, they care about their financial health - keeping their shareholders happy.
That's why we need a bullshit filter; to be able to sift through the marketing crap and uncover the absolute truth about particular products.
Of course it would be great if we lived in a world where every manufacturer and supplier was completely transparent about their products, but we don't. We live in a highly competitive, win-at-all-costs, sometimes amoral world, where some companies will do pretty much anything to 'win'. So the net result of all that, is that you and I need to be more aware, more educated and less naive, especially when it comes to managing our greatest resource, our body.
I could write an entire book on this subject (companies misrepresenting products, misleading consumers, using selective science and distorting the truth to sell products) but for today, I'll just focus on this simple, easy-to-understand example of how quickly we can be mislead when it comes to certain products, in this particular instance low-fat meals that aren't low fat at all.
Ignore the front and read the back.
If you really want to know what's in the box (packet, can, bag) understand that what's written on the front is called advertising, not information. The important information is usually somewhere on the back of the product in teeny weeny writing - no shock there.
Recently someone asked me what I thought of a particular 'low-fat' frozen dinner. I asked them to bring me the box so that I could take a peek at the nutritional information and give them some informed advice, specific to that product. You can see (part of) the front of the box in the picture (sorry about Johnnie's photographic skills - or lack thereof). I have intentionally not included the name of the manufacturer because most of these types of products (irrespective of the company) are very similar in terms of nutritional value, so I felt to publicly identify one of many companies would be unfair.
Notice the most prominent writing on this label - "97% fat free" - in large, impossible-to-miss letters. So clearly this must be a healthy, low-fat product. It says so right there on the box!
It also has the tick of approval of the 'National Heart Foundation' (bottom left), so it must be good. But as I said before, things are not always (in fact often) what they seem, especially when it comes to some low-fat food options.
Now let's take a look at the reverse side of the packet and we will discover how misleading some packaging and marketing can be. You may need to really pay attention and put on your thinking cap for the next bit. It's hard to make out, but the second green line in the nutrition information box says:
Fat, total (2.7% of meal) and we've already discovered from the front of the box that this meal is 97% fat-free, so that all stacks up.
However...
What if the formula that these companies use to calculate fat doesn't really tell us the true story? What if it's misleading?
When (most) companies calculate the fat percentage of their products they do so based on the weight of those products. For example, if a product weighs 100 grams and it contains 10 grams of fat, then that product is claimed to be 10% fat, or as often is the case, 90% fat-free. If we look at this particular product, we see that it weighs 340 grams and that it contains 9.2 grams of fat - therefore we have a meal which is only 2.7% fat. Or do we?
Now, if the weight of food was the issue (in terms of it's impact on our body) then they would be right, but when it comes to you or I gaining or losing body-fat, it ain't about the weight of food we put in our body, it's about it's energy density - how many calories that product contains. If it was only about the weight of food, I'd have to give up watermelon 'cause it's kinda heavy!!
What we need to know to accurately estimate the fat percentage of any food (and therefore it's potential impact on us) is this:
1. Total calories contained in that meal or product
2. How many of those (total) calories come from fat.
Simply calculate the fat calories as a percentage of the total calories and then you'll get an accurate picture of whether a product truly is low in fat. For example:
The above 'low-fat' meal contains a total of 378 calories and we know that it contains 9.2 grams of fat (the nutrition label gives us this info). We also know that one gram of fat contains 9 calories (well, you do now), so by simply multiplying 9.2 (the total grams of fat in this meal) by 9 (the calories per gram of fat) we can calculate that 82.8 of the total calories in this meal come from fat!!
In other words, just under 25% of the calories in this 'low-fat' meal are derived from fat!!
Hmmm, no wonder they use the 'weight' thing as opposed to the energy density thing. It would be much harder to sell a low-fat meal that was 25% fat wouldn't it?
Remember Grasshoppers, not everything is as it seems.
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