An awesome article on food labeling tricks and falsehoods appeared today on yahoo. Here’s a sampling of the fascinating doozies that the article exposes:
- Some products that advertise that they “contain whole grains” actually use carmel color to mimic the brown color that would appear from whole grains, while containing almost none of the good stuff. Instead their main ingredients are refined flour, salt, and sugar.
- Ingredients on food labels are listed in the order of greatest to least quantity, however there isn’t a clear way to aggregate ingredients when they appear under multiple names. For example high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, sugar, juice concentrates, fructose, etc are all sugars. A product could be 75% or more sugar but you can be mislead when the first ingredient on the label isn’t sugar.
- “Real fruit” marketing on products, which are typically targeted at kids, only technically need to contain a trace of fruit juice concentrate, =sugar. This is like squeezing a raisin and then dumping in a bunch of other sugar. Not the same thing as fruit.
- Fiber – apparently the fiber that is being added to multiple products (juices, powders, bars, etc) is inulin – a synthetic commercially manufactured product that does not act in the body like a natural fiber. That means no health benefits. But it shows up as fiber on the label.
- And my personal favorite, outrageous health claims. Kellog’s Cocoa Krispies recently tried to claim that their cereal improves kids’ immune system function. The FDA stepped in on this one, but there are plenty of other sketchy claims out that play on health claims like intelligence, heart health, cure cancer, etc. Unfortunately most packaged products are heavy in cheap ingredients – enriched flours and sugars, that outweight the benefits of any fringe ingredients. But the marketing focuses on those fringes.
It’s a great article and I encourage you to read the whole thing. Food marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it’s convincing! Learning what to look out for will help you make smarter decisions, be healthier, and provide nutritious foods to your family.