From Shelf to Health: Product Reformulations in Cookies Impacts the Public Health Consumption Estimates of Saturated Fat and Sugar Intakes

Abstract

Policies that limited trans fat forced the food industry to provide foods that mirrored pre‐legislation properties with new formulations; thus, many manufactures altered the saturated fat and sugar composition of cookies to address policy requirements and hedonic properties demanded by consumers. These phenomena present a challenge for national surveillance activities to accurately assess dietary patterns using a food composition database that represents point estimates of nutrient composition of the food supply. The purpose of this study was to overlay the nutritional data of industry innovation in 3,308 cookies from the 2005‐12 Global New Products Database (GNPD) to national cookie consumption from 2005‐12 NHANES to estimate the population consumption trends that may exist from such innovation. GNPD product data were cleaned and matched to the 115 cookies in the FNDDS. Aggregated minimum, maximum, mean and median estimates from each cookie type were appended to individual intake data to estimate the FNDDS and GNPD variability for total nutrient intakes for cookies per person per day (n=6,566). National estimates from FNDDS closely mirrored the GNPD mean and median product profiles; however, FNDDS had higher sodium and lower saturated fat estimates than the central tendencies of GNPD estimates. Cookie intakes predicted from minimum and maximum GNPD products had a considerable impact on estimating the saturated fat and sugars to offset the removal of trans fat. Product innovation can influence national consumption estimates when these products comprise a critical mass of the US food supply.