Hello there and welcome to the Nutrition Diva Podcast. I'm your host, Monica Reinegel,

and this week I have an update to a story that I started covering way back in 2016.

The FDA has spent the last seven years coming up with a new set of rules for which packaged

foods can promote themselves as healthy, and today I'm going to fill you in on what

they came up with. But first, a quick answer to a question sent in by Giselle.

My kids have been campaigning for me to buy an air fryer, she wrote. Everyone seems to

be talking about them, but I'm a little suspicious. I get that they use less oil, but is a chicken

wing cooked in an air fryer really any healthier than one I could bake in my oven? Well, Giselle,

to be honest, there probably wouldn't be a big difference nutritionally between a chicken

wing that you cooked in an air fryer and one that you baked in the oven. However, in

terms of the texture, the air fried wings might be a better imitation of deep fried wings

than the oven baked would be, and they would obviously be much lower in oil.

Air frires are essentially countertop convection ovens. They use swirling hot air to create

that crispy, browned texture that you get from deep fried foods, but using only a tiny

amount of oil. So not only do you consume much less oil and calories, but you're not left

with a quarter to have used oil to throw away afterwards. Researchers from Miami University

compared conventional deep fried french fries to convection fried and oven baked fries.

And that's how I had always done it. Both the oven baked and the convection fried potatoes

contained much less oil than the deep fried ones. But to my surprise, the convection fries

contained only half as much oil as the oven baked, just one tablespoon for an entire

batch. And again, the texture of those air fried french fries is much more similar to

deep fried than regular oven baked ones are. Air frying is also quicker than oven baking.

...