How healthy is 'healthy' food?

You might think you've already made the move to healthier food but in this investigation, the nutritional benefits of so called 'healthy options' will be revealed

Health-conscious consumers in Britain are slowly junking fast food. Instead, they are spending more on premium ready-meals and foods that claim to be healthier, enticed by packaging claiming health benefits.

This shift in eating patters has been such a commercial success that the market for premium supermarket brands is now worth more than £5 billion. But in this investigation, the first of two Dispatches programmes in the Big Food Fight journalist Jane Moore investigates whether the prices of premium ranges reflect their nutritional value and reveals that consumers are not always told the truth about the food they eat.

The programme investigates the claims made by a range of popular products, by subjecting a range of them to laboratory analysis. The results are unappetising: labelling can be grossly inaccurate, 'healthy' options can have more calories than ordinary ranges and supermarkets are stocking some products that make unsubstantiated health claims.

With contributions from leading nutritional experts, this is essential viewing for those of us making New Year's resolutions to eat more healthily.

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