When I got home recently after the exams for christmas, I noticed that my parents themselves have also jumped on the healthfood bandwagon =/ Spent an hour sharing with them why they shouldn't be paying more for some products, and thought I would share them here.
Firstly, both Vitagen and Fruit Tree Fresh now have products containing jelly-like collagen. Yes, collagen is an important part of the extra cellular matrix and helps to keep skin firm. Loss of collagen with age results in wrinkles.
So yeah, where you would want more collagen is in your skin. Thus, the many face masks that include collagen, claiming it can pass through the epidermis of your skin, and under it. But including collagen in your food? Firstly, proteins are digested/broken down in your stomach to the amino acid building blocks. So really, eating collagen wouldn't really help. And next, collagen is also present in the fibrils, tendons, skin, gut, cartilage of animals that you eat. If it were true, you would get better skin from eating kway chap and pork trotters. That's how ridiculous it is. So really, no point spending more on these products, unless you are using them for something else besides drinking.
Next is the addition of sterols into milk and being shown to reduce cholesterol.
Sterols are found in plants, and have been shown, when ingested in humans, to be able to block cholesterol uptake by the human intestine. So yes, when taken with your meals, they help to reduce cholesterol. Sterols are mainly found in food like brown rice, peas, seeds, broccoli, tomatoes, blueberries and such. However, these aren't exactly the tastiest of foods.
So companies have also added Sterols as an additive to fortify food stuff. This is great for juices and all, but milk? Do you really drink a glass of milk during each meal? I probably only have it for breakfast. So yeah, maybe it is great if I have a fried big breakfast, but not so great if I'm having cornflakes =/
Great value for money? I guess it decides on your lifestyle and meals.