Confused About Quinoa and Nutrition? So Are Other Americans

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/upshot/confused-about-quinoa-and-nutrition-so-are-other-americans.html

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When we asked people what foods they thought were “healthy,” a lot said, “I don’t know.”

On Tuesday, we showed you how nutritionists and the public rated the healthfulness of a selection of 52 foods in two surveys conducted with the Morning Consult, a media and polling firm. There were some foods with big gaps in perceived healthfulness between the two groups. Ordinary Americans thought foods like orange juice, frozen yogurt and granola were healthier than nutritionists said they were. Nutritionists ranked quinoa, tofu and hummus as healthier than the public did.

For some of those foods, that split represented a simple difference of opinion — perhaps all those commercials for Florida orange juice have had more resonance with the public than with professionals.

But nutritionists and ordinary Americans also differ in an obvious but important way: Nutritionists know a lot more about food. And uncertainty on the subject among the public helps explain the difference in ratings for some foods: The gap was not just one between a rating of “healthy” and “unhealthy” but between “healthy” and “I don’t know.”

Kind bars, quinoa, sushi and tofu puzzled many Americans; at least 20 percent of survey respondents said they didn’t know whether those foods were healthful.

We asked about Kind bars specifically because that company’s complaints about the treatment of its snack bars had led the Food and Drug Administration to rethink its rules for what can be called a “healthy” food. About 37 percent of the people who participated in our survey said they didn’t know whether a Kind bar was healthful or not. The high “don’t know” rating could reflect an uncertainty that a different F.D.A. designation would help clarify.

More likely, the high “don’t know” number for Kind bars reflects the newness of the brand; not every American, and not every nutritionist, has eaten one.

A similar phenomenon appears to be happening for quinoa, that much-lauded (and sometimes parodied) hard-to-pronounce “superfood.” Our nutritionists really liked quinoa, but a segment of the public seemed unfamiliar with the grain-like seeds.

There are some foods that Americans just can’t agree on: steak, cheese and popcorn, for example. But there are also foods that people need to know more about before making up their minds.