Fortified. Enriched. How About Just Eating The Real Deal?

Check out the website of the good old USD (EatRight.org) and you can easily decipher the legal definition of the two food-industry terms:

“Both terms mean that nutrients have been added to make the food more nutritious. Enriched means nutrients that were lost during food processing have been added back. An example is adding back certain vitamins lost in processing wheat to make white flour. Fortified means vitamins or minerals have been added to a food that weren’t originally in the food. An example is adding vitamin D to milk“. 

So, we can ingest ‘food’ that have vitamins added back in to replace those during processing (so why not just eat the food that’s not processed in the first place?) or a ‘food’ that didn’t have the vitamins or minerals in it, to begin with.  

OK, then.

Kinda reminds me of a sign I saw outside of a frozen yogurt shop, advertising the added protein in the dessert, as if to make it a healthy option for a meal replacement.

Look, there’s not anything tricky about this.  Choosing a fortified or enriched product is never going to be a healthier option compared to a whole, real, fresh, unadulterated food.

Further, the whole, real, fresh unadulterated food is far less likely to cause or contribute to adverse health conditions compared to a refined, packaged, ‘vitamin-added’ food industry product.

Leaves over grains!