 By David Otto
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Deceptive Food Labels Part 1Each year millions of American's take on the challenge of "eating healthy," "eating better" or whatever phrase comes to mind for eating in a manner that will help them achieve a positive physical outcome. I'll say this, the grocery store can be a literal mine field when it comes to buying so-called healthy foods.
Once you get the "eating right" part down you still have to weed through those pesky food labels which are pretty good at deceiving people and slowing down progress. So what do you do? Become a label sleuth. There are many ways the food company's use common mislabeling tactics to get you to buy their so called "healthier" products. You're probably wondering how they can get away with it. It's fairly simple. The FDA is funded by food and drug companies which allow the FDA to create loopholes in the labeling laws so that food sales won't be jeopardized which in turn allows food companies to legally lie. Check out these examples.
FAT-FREE!
Here's a good one and the classic example I like to use is the can of fat free cooking spray. On the front of the can it says "For Fat Free Cooking" but turn it around and read the ingredient label and it says it contains some type of oil like canola or olive oil. Well, you've got to be wondering how the nutrition label reads 0 grams of fat when if you take a bottle of canola oil and see that 1 tbsp equals 14 grams of pure fat. Here's the catch: it's all about the serving size. The law states that for anything to be fat free it must have less than half a gram of fat per serving. Guess what? The FDA doesn't put any law or regulation on what the food companies can say a serving size is. Look at the nutrition facts label again and check out the serving size; 0.27 grams per serving or 1/3 second of spray! So of course there is less than half a gram of fat in a serving that's 0.27 grams. That can of "Fat Free Cooking Spray" is PURE FAT and that's how they lie.
Is this product totally "bad?" No, and I would recommend it over butter as a means to coat a frying pan if need be since you do not need to use all that much despite the fact you're putting pure fat on your food. It's misleading, that's all. By the way, if you have a Teflon coated non-stick pan you shouldn't use cooking spray because it eats away the non-stick coating. What's even more ridiculous is that certain makers of these pans will include a can of cooking spray that's attached to the pan with the purchase of one of these pans. Obviously so you can eat the pan's coating up and then go buy another one. But Anyway, PAY ATTENTION TO THE SERVING SIZE!
2% FAT or 96% FAT FREE
We see this one everyday almost. The most common ones are dairy and meat products. Milk is an easy one so I'll use that as an example. Two percent milk suggests to the consumer that 2% of its calories come from fat and the other 98% comes from other nutrients. Turn the carton around and you will be shocked to find that in fact approximately 35% of its calories come from fat. All you do is divide the "calories from fat" by the total calories to see that the percentage of calories from fat is far more than two percent.
So by using yet another loophole, the FDA allows the food companies to report nutrient percentages based on total volume. The percentage of fat calories is not 2% but that there is only 2% total fat grams in an 8 oz. serving. This doesn't equate to percentage of calories. Why? Because milk is predominantly water and water has zero calories. The same goes for meats that say 96-98% fat free. There's a lot of water in that meat believe it or not.
Next up are the ways food companies make you think a product is healthier.
LOW CALORIE and REDUCED CALORIE
For a food to be considered low calorie it has to have fewer than 40 calories per serving. Remember how a serving size can be manipulated. A product could be relatively small and have 30 servings and say low calorie.
Reduced calorie means that a food must have 25% or more fewer calories than a comparable product. Both products could be super high calorie but one is 25% less than the other. Low Calorie and Reduced Calorie does not mean it is low in fat or low in carbs or anything. These labels aren't necessarily lying, they're just deceptive. Read the serving size.
REDUCED FAT or REDUCED SUGAR
These are similar to low and reduced calorie. For a food to be considered reduced fat or reduced sugar it has to have 25% or more fewer fat/sugar grams than a comparable product. Reduced fat peanut butter is a good example. It may have less fat grams than the regular version but it is still high in fat but labeled Reduced Fat! Reduced Fat does not mean low fat.
CALORIE FREE
For a food to be labeled calorie free is must contain 5 calories or less per serving. This is the same statement they put on cans of fat free cooking spray. All they do is manipulate the serving size.
MULTIGRAIN
The push to eat more whole grain foods is bigger than ever but what you might think is better because it has the words "multigrain, mixed grain" or whatever may not be that much better than plain old white bread. Today you see many types of breads that say "multigrain" on the front of the package which would insinuate a better product than white bread…or is it? If you look on the ingredient label of many of theses "multigrain" products the first thing you will see is "enriched wheat flour" and then a list of the particular grains that might be in the bread. When the first ingredient says "enriched" it's not all that much different than white bread but with a different color and a few extra grains. What you want to pay attention for on the ingredient labels are the words "100% whole wheat flour or whole wheat flour." The word "enriched" with a few B Vitamins listed in parentheses (this is what they had to add back to the flour to make it sellable as food) shouldn't appear anywhere on the label if you want a better product.
Now I'm not making this sound like these multigrain breads are "bad" because they aren't. No food is bad in and of itself but I try to get people away from thinking of foods as either "good" or "bad" but instead to think of different foods as Supportive or Less Supportive. A product that's made from 100% whole wheat flour will be more Supportive than a product made from "enriched wheat flour" with "multigrain" on the front of the package However, the multigrain bread that contains a fair amount of fiber would be better than plain old white bread so there's somewhat of a hierarchy here.
Okay, I want to wrap it up for Part 1 of "Deceptive Food Labels" so be sure to read the conclusion with Part 2.
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